A tag, and is it thus that women suffer? We can inflict so little on such natures; We cannot make reprisals. Slavish tears For Edric, and, — O Hel! a bloody gleam

Across her eyes, when I proclaimed the

rights

Of Edmund's children. I am cut adrift, Far, far from the great, civilizing God, Dull, speechless, unappraised.

[A voice singing.] Is that a child

At babble with his vespers ?-Silver sweet! It minds me of the holy brotherhood, Chanting adown the banks.

As yesterday

I see all clear, how as they moved they chanted,

And made a mute procession in the stream. [Gazing abstractedly on the water.]

Merrily sang the monks of Ely,
As Canute the king passed by.
Row to the shore, knights, said the king,
And let us hear the Churchmen sing.

Still are they singing? It was Candlemas, My queen sat splendid at the prow and listened

With heaving breast. 'Twas then the passion seized me

To emulate, to let her know my ear Had common pleasure with her, and I thrilled

The story out. The look she turned on

me!

Without the door. A wail, a litany!
Enter Child singing.

Child. Miserere mei, Deus, secundam
magnam misericordiam tuam ;

Et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum, dele iniquitatem meam.

Can. How perfectly he sings the music! Child,

Who art thou with that voice, those dying cheeks?

Art thou an angel sent to wring my heart, Or is it mortal woe? Thine arms are full.

Child. Green, country herbs, they say, will staunch a wound,

And I have run about the fields and

gathered

Those I could catch up quickly :-- - for the blood

Was leaping all the while. But here is clary,

The blessed thistle, yarrow, sicklewort, And all-heal red as gore. I knew a wood So dark and cool, I crept for lily-leaves; Then it grew lonely, and I lost the way. But, oh, you must not beat me; it is done. Father, I stabbed him, throw away the whip!

Now God will scourge me. So I plucked

the flowers,

And sang for mercy in the holy words Priest Sampson taught me, Miserere !

Can.

Is Edric's child, the little murderer, Who did my deed of treason.

turn

Those trustful eyes from off me. Child.

This

Edmund,

Take me back. He will be dead. . . He fell, O father, fell,

And when I put my cheek against his side, Gave a great pant. Let's pray for him

together.

For I did it,

Can you sing Miserere?
And then he looked . . . Once in the ivy-

tod

I caught an owl, and hurt its wing. 'Twas

SO

He looked. lies

Oh, quickly tell me where he

Next room? or down the passage? Do you know

He was my uncle, and was kissing me,

To listen to thee in thy leafery,
Thou unconfined,

Lavish, large, soothing, refluent summerwind.

THE DANCERS

I DANCE and dance! Another faun,
A black one, dances on the lawn.
He moves with me, and when I lift
My heels his feet directly shift:
I can't outdance him though I try;
He dances nimbler than I.

I toss my head, and so does he ;
What tricks he dares to play on me!
I touch the ivy in my hair;
Ivy he has and finger there.
The spiteful thing to mock me so!
I will outdance him! Ho, ho, ho!

LETTICE

LITTLE Lettice is dead, they say,

The brown, sweet child who rolled in the

hay;

Ah, where shall we find her?

For the neighbors pass

To the pretty lass,

In a linen cere-cloth to wind her.

If her sister were set to search

The nettle-green nook beside the church,
And the way were shown her
Through the coffin-gate
To her dead playmate,

She would fly too frightened to own her.

Should she come at a noonday call,
Ah, stealthy, stealthy, with no footfall,
And no laughing chatter,

To her mother 't were worse
Than a barren curse

That her own little wench should pat her.

Little Lettice is dead and gone!
The stream by her garden wanders on
Through the rushes wider;
She fretted to know

How its bright drops grow
On the hills, but no hand would guide her.

Little Lettice is dead and lost!

Her willow-tree boughs by storm are tost —

I charge you, O dews of the Dawn, O tears of the star of the morn,

That ye fall at the feet of my love with the sound of one weeping forlorn.

I charge you, O birds of the Air, O birds flying home to your nest,

That ye sing in his ears of the joy that forever has fled from my breast.

I charge you, O flowers of the Earth, O frailest of things, and most fair, That ye droop in his path as the life in me shrivels consumed by despair.

O Moon, when he lifts up his face, when he seeth the waning of thee,

A memory of her who lies wan on the limits of life let it be.

Many tears cannot quench, nor my sighs extinguish, the flames of love's fire, Which lifteth my heart like a wave, and smites it, and breaks its desire.

I rise like one in a dream when I see the red sun flaring low,

That drags me back shuddering from sleep each morning to life with its woe.

I go like one in a dream; unbidden my feet know the way

To that garden where love stood in blossom with the red and white hawthorn of May.

The song of the throstle is hushed, and the fountain is dry to its core,

The moon cometh up as of old; she seeks, but she finds him no more.

The pale-faced, pitiful moon shines down on the grass where I weep,

My face to the earth, and my breast in an anguish ne'er soothed into sleep.

The moon returns, and the spring, birds warble, trees burst into leaf,

But love once gone, goes forever, and all that endures is the grief.

THE DEAD

THE dead abide with us! Though stark and cold

Earth seems to grip them, they are with us still:

They have forged our chains of being for good or ill;

And their invisible hands these hands yet hold.

Our perishable bodies are the mould
In which their strong imperishable will
Mortality's deep yearning to fulfil —
Hath grown incorporate through dim time
untold.

Vibrations infinite of life in death,

As a star's travelling light survives its star! So may we hold our lives, that when we are The fate of those who then will draw this breath,

They shall not drag us to their judgmentbar,

And curse the heritage which we bequeath.

FROM "LOVE IN EXILE"

I

WHY will you haunt me unawares,
And walk into my sleep,
Pacing its shadowy thoroughfares,
Where long-dried perfume scents the airs,
While ghosts of sorrow creep,
Where on Hope's ruined altar-stairs,
With ineffectual beams,
The Moon of Memory coldly glares
Upon the land of dreams?

My yearning eyes were fain to look
Upon your hidden face;

Their love, alas! you could not brook,
But in your own you mutely took

My hand, and for a space

You wrung it till I throbbed and shook,
And woke with wildest moan
And wet face channelled like a brook
With your tears or my own.