Ah God, that they were but mine, all mine,

to mangle and slay! How they shuddered and shrank, erewhile, at the sound of thy very

name,

When we lived as the gray wolves live, whom torture nor want may tame : And thou but a man! and still a scourge and a terror to men,

Yet only my lover to me, my dear, in the rare days then.

years of revel and love! ye are gone as the wind goes by,

He is snared and shorn of his strength, and the anguish of hell have I

I am here, love, at thy feet; I have ridden far and fast

To gaze in thine eyes again, and to kiss thy lips at the last."

She rose to her feet and stood upright on the gaunt mare's back,

And she pressed her full red lips to his that were strained and black. Good-night, for the last time now-goodnight, beloved, and good-bye

And his soul fled into the waste between a kiss and a sigh.

DEID FOLKS' FERRY

'Tis They, of a veritie

They are calling thin an' shrill; We maun rise an' put to sea,

We maun gi'e the deid their will, We maun ferry them owre the faem, For they draw us as they list; We maun bear the deid folk hame Through the mirk an' the saft seamist.

"But how can I gang the nicht,

When I'm new come hame frae sea? When my heart is sair for the sicht

O' my lass that langs for me?"

"O your lassie lies asleep,

An' sae do your bairnies twa; The cliff-path's stey an' steep, An' the deid folk cry an' ca'."

O sae hooly steppit we,

For the nicht was mirk an' lown,

HEREAFTER

SHALL we not weary in the windless days
Hereafter, for the murmur of the sea,
The cool salt air across some grassy lea?
Shall we not go bewildered through a maze
Of stately streets with glittering gems
ablaze,

Forlorn amid the pearl and ivory,
Straining our eyes beyond the bourne to see
Phantoms from out Life's dear, forsaken
ways?

Give us again the crazy clay-built nest,
Summer, and soft unseasonable spring,
Our flowers to pluck, our broken songs to
sing,

Our fairy gold of evening in the West;
Still to the land we love our longings

cling,

The sweet, vain world of turmoil and unrest.

THE FARM ON THE LINKS

GRAY o'er the pallid links, haggard and forsaken,

Still the old roof-tree hangs rotting overhead,

Still the black windows stare sullenly to seaward,

Still the blank doorway gapes, open to the dead;

What is it cries with the crying of the curlews?

What comes apace on those fearful, stealthy feet,

Back from the chill sea-deeps, gliding o'er the sand-dunes,

Home to the old home, once again to meet?

What is to say as they gather round the hearth-stone,

Flameless and dull as the feuds and fears of old?

Laughing and fleering still, menacing and mocking,

Sadder than death itself, harsher than the cold.

Woe for the ruined hearth, black with dule

and evil,

Woe for the wrong and the hate too deep to die!

THE DEAD COACH

AT night when sick folk wakeful lie,
I heard the dead coach passing by,
And heard it passing wild and fleet,
And knew my time was come not yet.

Click-clack, click-clack, the hoofs went past,
Who takes the dead coach travels fast,
On and away through the wild night,
The dead must rest ere morning light.

If one might follow on its track
The coach and horses, midnight black,
Within should sit a shape of doom
That beckons one and all to come.

God pity them to-night who wait
To hear the dead coach at their gate,
And him who hears, though sense be
dim,

The mournful dead coach stop for him.

He shall go down with a still face,
And mount the steps and take his place,
The door be shut, the order said!
How fast the pace is with the dead!

Click-clack, click-clack, the hour is chill,
The dead coach climbs the distant hill.
Now, God, the Father of us all,
Wipe Thou the widow's tears that fall!

A PURE HYPOTHESIS

(A Lover, in Four-dimensioned space, describes a Dream.)

Aн, love, the teacher we decried,
That erudite professor grim,

In mathematics drenched and dyed,
Too hastily we scouted him.

He said: "The bounds of Time and Space,

The categories we revere,

May be in quite another case

In quite another sphere."

He told us: "Science can conceive

A race whose feeble comprehension Can't be persuaded to believe

That there exists our Fourth Dimen-
sion,

Whom Time and Space for ever balk;
But of these beings incomplete,
Whether upon their heads they walk
Or stand upon their feet-

"We cannot tell, we do not know,
Imagination stops confounded;
We can but say 'It may be so,'
To every theory propounded."
Too glad were we in this our scheme
Of things, his notions to embrace, -
But I have dreamed an awful dream
Of Three-dimensioned Space!

I would not, if I could, recall

The horror of those novel heavens,
Where Present, Past, and Future all
Appeared at sixes and at sevens,
Where Capital and Labor fought,
And, in the nightmare of the mind,
No contradictories were thought
As truthfully combined!

Nay, in that dream-distorted clime,
These fatal wilds I wandered through,
The boundaries of Space and Time
Had got most frightfully askew.
"What is askew'?" my love, you cry;
I cannot answer, can't portray;
The sense of Everything awry

No language can convey.

I can't tell what my words denote,
I know not what my phrases mean;
Inexplicable terrors float

Before this spirit once serene.