The Daffodil Fields – John Masefield

The Daffodil Fields

by John Masefield

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She faded to the memory of a kiss,

There in the rough life among foreign faces;

Love cannot live where leisure never is;

He could not write to her from savage places,

Where drunken mates were betting on the aces,

And rum went round and smutty songs were lifted.

He would not raise her banner against that; he drifted,

Ceasing, in time, to write, ceasing to think,

But happy in the wild life to the bone;

The riding in vast space, the songs, the drink,

Some careless heart beside him like his own,

The racing and the fights, the ease unknown

In older, soberer lands; his young blood thrilled.

The pampas seemed his own, his cup of joy was filled.

And one day, riding far after strayed horses,

He rode beyond the ranges to a land

Broken and made most green by watercourses,

Which served as strayline to the neighbouring brand.

A house stood near the brook; he stayed his hand,

Seeing a woman there, whose great eyes burned,
So that he could not choose but follow when she
turned.

After that day he often rode to see
That woman at the peach farm near the brook,
And passionate love between them came to be
Ere many days. Their fill of love they took;
And even as the blank leaves of a book
The days went over Mary, day by day,
Blank as the last, was turned, endured, passed, turned
away.
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