The Gypsy (1918, Edward Thomas)

  

fortnight before Christmas Gypsies were everywhere:

Vans were drawn up on wastes, women trailed to the fair.

'My gentleman,' said one, 'You've got a lucky face.'

'And you've a luckier,' I thought, 'if such a grace

And impudence in rags are lucky.' 'Give a penny

For the poor baby's sake.' 'Indeed I had not any 

Unless you can give change for a sovereign, my dear.'

'Then just half a pipeful of tobacco can you spare?'

I gave it. With that much victory she laughed content.

I should have given more, but off and away she went

With her baby and her pink sham flowers to rejoin

The rest before I could translate to its proper coin

Gratitude for her grace. And I paid nothing then,

As I pay nothing now with the dipping of my pen

For her brother's music when he drummed the tambourine

And stamped his feet, which made the workmen passing grin,

While his mouth-organ changed to a rascally Bacchanal dance 

'Over the hills and far away'. This and his glance 

Outlasted all the fair, farmer and auctioneer,

Cheap-jack, balloon-man, drover with crooked stick, and steer,

Pig, turkey, goose, and duck, Christmas corpses to be. 

Not even the kneeling ox had eyes like the Romany.

That night he peopled for me the hollow wooded land,

More dark and wild than stormiest heavens, that I searched and scanned

Like a ghost new-arrived. The gradations of the dark

Were like an underworld of death, but for the spark

In the Gypsy boy's black eyes as he played and stamped his tune,

'Over the hills and far away', and a crescent moon.  

 

 Edward Thomas, 1918