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bring

Brimming with freshness. How their dippers ring

And flash and rumble ! lavishing dark dew On corn and forestland, that, streaming wet,

Their hilly backs against the downpour set,

Like giants vague in view.

The butterfly, safe under leaf and flower, Has found a roof, knowing how true thou art;

The bumble-bee, within the last half-hour, Has ceased to hug the honey to its heart; While in the barnyard, under shed and

cart, Brood-hens have housed. - But I, who scorned thy power, Barometer of the birds,

-

like August

there, Beneath a beech, dripping from foot to hair,

Like some drenched truant, cower.

TO A WIND-FLOWER

TEACH me the secret of thy loveliness, That, being made wise, I may aspire to be

As beautiful in thought, and so express
Immortal truths to earth's mortality;
Though to my soul ability be less

Than 't is to thee, O sweet anemone.

Teach me the secret of thy innocence,
That in simplicity I may grow wise,
Asking from Art no other recompense
Than the approval of her own just

eyes;

So may I rise to some fair eminence,

Though less than thine, O cousin of the skies.

Teach me these things, through whose high knowledge, I,

When Death hath poured oblivion through my veins,

And brought me home, as all are brought, to lie

In that vast house, common to serfs and
Thanes,

I shall not die, I shall not utterly die,
For beauty born of beauty-that remains.

DEATH

THROUGH Some strange sense of sight or touch

I find what all have found before,
The presence I have feared so much,
The unknown's immaterial door.

I seek not and it comes to me;
I do not know the thing I find:
The fillet of fatality

Drops from my brows that made me blind.

Point forward now or backward, light!
The way I take I may not choose:
Out of the night into the night,
And in the night no certain clews.

But on the future, dim and vast,
And dark with dust and sacrifice,
Death's towering ruin from the past
Makes black the land that round me

lies.

THE SOUL

AN heritage of hopes and fears
And dreams and memory,
And vices of ten thousand years
God gives to thee.

A house of clay, the home of Fate,
Haunted of Love and Sin,

Where Death stands knocking at the gate
To let him in.

THE CREEK-ROAD

CALLING, the heron flies athwart the blue
That sleeps above it; reach on rocky reach
Of water sings by sycamore and beech,
In whose warm shade bloom lilies not a few.
It is a page whereon the sun and dew
Scrawl sparkling words in dawn's delicious
speech;

A laboratory where the wood-winds teach,
Dissect each scent and analyze each hue.
Not otherwise than beautiful, doth it
Record the happenings of each summer
day;

Where we may read, as in a catalogue, When passed a thresher; when a load of hay;

Or when a rabbit; or a bird that lit;
And now a barefoot truant and his dog.

KU KLUX

WE have sent him seeds of the melon's core,

And nailed a warning upon his door;
By the Ku Klux laws we can do no more.

Down in the hollow, mid crib and stack, The roof of his low-porched house looms black,

Not a line of light at the doorsill's crack.

Yet arm and mount! and mask and ride! The hounds can sense though the fox may hide!

And for a word too much men oft have died.

The clouds blow heavy towards the moon. The edge of the storm will reach it soon. The killdee cries and the lonesome loon.

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Ring, ting! it is the merry springtime,

How full of heart a body feels! Sing hey, trolly lolly, oh, to live is to be jolly,

When spring-time cometh with the summer at her heels!

THE SONG OF THE HUNT

(OLD WARWICKSHIRE)

THE hunt is up, the hunt is up;
Sing merrily we, the hunt is up!
The wild birds sing,
The dun deer fling,

The forest aisles with music ring!
Tantara, tantara, tantara!

Then ride along, ride along,
Stout and strong!

Farewell to grief and care;
With a rollicking cheer
For the high dun deer

And a life in the open air!
Tantara, the hunt is up, lads;
Tantara, the bugles bray!
Tantara, tantara, tantara,
Hio, hark away!

GOD BLESS YOU, DEAR, TODAY!

If there be graveyards in the heart

From which no roses spring, A place of wrecks and old gray tombs From which no birds take wing, Where linger buried hopes and dreams Like ghosts among the graves, Why, buried hopes are dismal things, And lonely ghosts are knaves! If there come dreary winter days, When summer roses fall

And lie, forgot, in withered drifts
Along the garden wall;
If all the wreaths a lover weaves
Turn thorns upon the brow, -
Then out upon the silly fool

Who makes not merry now!

For if we cannot keep the past,

Why care for what's to come? The instant's prick is all that stings, And then the place is numb. If Life's a lie and Love's a cheat, As I have heard men say, Then here's a health to fond deceit God bless you, dear, to-day!

HER ANSWER

TO-DAY, dear heart, but just to-day,
The sunshine over all,
The roses crimsoning the air
Along the garden wall!
Then let the dream and dreamer die;
Whate'er shall be, shall be-
To-day will still be thine and mine
To all eternity.

And oh, there is no glory, dear,
When all the world is done,
There is no splendor lasteth out
The sinking of the sun;
There is no thing that lasts, not one,
When we have turned to clay,
But this: you loved me- all the rest
Fades with the world away.

So little while, so little while

This world doth last for us,
There is no way to keep it, dear,
But just to spend it thus.
There is no hand may stop the sand
From flowing fast away

But his who turns the whole glass down
And dreams 't is all to-day.

Edward Lucas White

THE LAST BOWSTRINGS THEY had brought in such sheafs of hair, And flung them all about us there

In the loud noonday's heat and glare:
Gold tresses, far too fine to wind,
And brown, with copper curls entwined,
And black coils, black as all my mind.

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