PREFACE.
I TELL the Tale of the Road, with scraps of gossip and curious lore,
With a laugh, or a sigh, and a tear in the eye for the joys and sorrows of yore:
What were they like, those sorrows and joys, you ask, O Heir of the Ages:
Read, then, mark, learn, and perpend, an you will, from these gossipy pages.
Here, free o’er the shuddery heath, where the curlew calls shrill to his mate,
Wandered the Primitive Man, in his chilly and primitive state;
Unkempt and shaggy, reckless of razor, of comb, or of soap:
Hunted, lived, loved, and died, in untutored and primitive hope.
For what did he hope, that picturesque heathen, hunter of fur and of feather?
For a Better Land, with weapons to hand, much quarry, and fine hunting weather.
Now white runs the devious road, o’er the trackless space that he trod,
Who hunted the heath, and died, and yielded his primitive soul unto God.
Briton and conquering Roman, Iceni, Saxon, piratical Dane,
Have marched where he joyously ranged, and peopled this desolate plain.
Dynasties, peoples, and laws have waxed, ruled, and faded, and gone,
But still spreads his primitive home, sombre, unfertile, and lone.
Here toiled the wallowing coach, where the highway goes winding away:
Here the highwayman lurked in the shadow, impatiently waiting his prey:
There, where the turbulent river, unbridged, rolled fiercely in spate,
The wayfarer, seeking the deep-flooded ford, met a watery fate.
I can show you the suicide’s grave, where bracken and bryony twine,
By cross-roads on the heath, where the breath of the breeze is like wine;
And bees and butterflies flit in the sun, and life is joyous and sweet,
And takes no care for the tragedy there, where the suicide sleeps at your feet.
Dwellers in village and town, each contribute their tale to the store,
Peasants of valley and down, fishers by river and shore.
Thus I tell you the Tale of the Road, told with a laugh or a sigh;
Sought with a zest, told with a jest, wrought with a tear in the eye.
CHARLES G. HARPER.
Petersham,
Surrey,
February, 1904.