Green Bays | Page 2

When ye are gonne?
Shalle I alone
Delayinge crye 'Anon, Anon'?

Naye, let the spyder have my gowne,
To brayde therein her veste.
My cappe shal serve, now I 'goe downe,'
For mouse's neste.
Loe! this is best.
I care not, soe I gayne my reste.
THE SPLENDID SPUR.
Not on the neck of prince or hound,?Nor on a woman's finger twin'd,?May gold from the deriding ground?Keep sacred that we sacred bind:
Only the heel
Of splendid steel
Shall stand secure on sliding fate,?When golden navies weep their freight.
The scarlet hat, the laurell'd stave
Are measures, not the springs, of worth;?In a wife's lap, as in a grave,
Man's airy notions mix with earth.
Seek other spur
Bravely to stir
The dust in this loud world, and tread?Alp-high among the whisp'ring dead.
Trust in thyself,--then spur amain:
So shall Charybdis wear a grace,?Grim Aetna laugh, the Libyan plain?Take roses to her shrivell'd face.
This orb--this round
Of sight and sound--
Count it the lists that God hath built?For haughty hearts to ride a-tilt.
THE WHITE MOTH.
_If a leaf rustled, she would start:
And yet she died, a year ago.?How had so frail a thing the heart?To journey where she trembled so??And do they turn and turn in fright,?Those little feet, in so much night?_
The light above the poet's head?Streamed on the page and on the cloth,?And twice and thrice there buffeted?On the black pane a white-wing'd moth;?'Twas Annie's soul that beat outside
And 'Open, open, open!' cried:
'I could not find the way to God;
There were too many flaming suns?For signposts, and the fearful road?Led over wastes where millions?Of tangled comets hissed and burned--?I was bewilder'd and I turned.
'O, it was easy then! I knew
Your window and no star beside.?Look up, and take me back to you!'?--He rose and thrust the window wide.?'Twas but because his brain was hot
With rhyming; for he heard her not.
But poets polishing a phrase?Show anger over trivial things;?And as she blundered in the blaze?Towards him, on ecstatic wings,?He raised a hand and smote her dead;?Then wrote 'That I had died instead!'
IRISH MELODIES.
I.
TIM THE DRAGOON (From 'Troy Town')
Be aisy an' list to a chune?That's sung of bowld Tim the Dragoon--
Sure, 'twas he'd niver miss
To be stalin' a kiss,
Or a brace, by the light of the moon--
Aroon--
Wid a wink at the Man in the Moon!
Rest his sowl where the daisies grow thick;?For he's gone from the land of the quick:
But he's still makin' love
To the leddies above,
An' be jabbers! he'll tache 'em the thrick--
Avick--
Niver doubt but he'll tache 'em the thrick!
'Tis by Tim the dear saints'll set sthore,?And 'ull thrate him to whisky galore:
For they 've only to sip
But