Green Bays | Page 2

This even, by the dismalle yewe,
Of faces three
That beckoned mee
To land where no repynynges bee?

O Harrye, Harrye, Tom and Dicke,
Each lost companion!
Why loyter I among the quicke,
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