Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch | Page 5

St. Crag, so the stories say,
And his ashes cast on the
winds away,
But the well survives, and the block of wood

Stands--nay, stood where it always stood,
And still was the village's
pride and glory
On the day of which I shall tell my story.
Gnarled
and knotty and weather-stained,
Battered and cracked, it still
remained;
And thither came,
Footsore and lame,
On an autumn evening a year
ago
The wandering pedlar, Gipsy Joe.
Beside the block he stood
and set
His table out on the well-stones wet.
"Who'll buy? Who'll
buy?" was the call he cried
As the folk came flocking from every side;

For they knew their Gipsy Joe of old,
His free wild words and his
laughter bold:
So high and low all gathered together
By the village
well in the autumn weather,
Lured by the gipsy's bargain-chatter

And the reckless lilt of his hare-brained patter.
And there the Revd.
Salvyn Bent,
The parish church's ornament,
Stood, as it chanced, in
discontent,
And eyed with a look that was almost sinister
The Revd.
Joshua Fall, the minister.
And the Squire, it happened, was riding by,

With an angry look in his bloodshot eye,
Growling, as was his
wont, and grunting
At the wasted toil of a bad day's hunting;
And
he stopped his horse on its homeward way
To hear what the gipsy
had to say.
III
Then the pedlar called to the crowd to hear,
And his voice rang loud
and his voice rang clear;
And he lifted his head and began to troll

The whimsical words of his rigmarole:--
"_Since last I talked to you here I've hurled
My lone way over the
wide, wide world.

South and North and West and East
I've fought
with man and I've fought with beast_;
_And I've opened the gates and

cleared the bar
That blocks the road to the morning star!_
"_I've seen King Pharaoh sitting down
On his golden throne in his
jewelled crown,
With wizards fanning like anything
To cool the
face of the mighty King:
But the King said, 'Wizards are off,' said he;

'Let Joseph the gipsy talk to me.'_
"_So I sat by the King and began to spout
As the day drew in and the
sun went out;
And I sat by the King and spun my tale
Till the light
returned and the night grew pale;
And none of the Wizards blinked or
stirred
While the King sat drinking it word by word._
"_Then he gave me rubies and diamonds old;
He gave me masses of
minted gold.
He gave me all that a King can give:
The right to live
and to cease to live
Whenever--and that'll be soon, I know--
The
days are numbered of Gipsy Joe._
"_Then I went and I wandered on and on
Till I came to the kingdom
of Prester John;
And there I stood on a crystal stool
And sang the
song of 'The First Wise Fool':
Oh, I sang it low and I sang it high

Till John he whimpered and piped his eye._
"_Then I drew a tooth from the lively jaw
Of the Prester's ebony
Aunt-in-law;
And he bubbled and laughed so long, d'you see,
That
his wife looked glum and I had to flee.
So I fled to the place where
the Rajahs grow,
A place where they wanted Gipsy Joe._
"_The Rajahs summoned the turbaned hordes
And gave me sheaves
of their inlaid swords;
And the Shah of Persia next I saw,
Who's
brother and friend to the Big Bashaw;
And he sent me a rope of
turquoise stones
The size of a giant's knuckle-bones._
"_But a little brown Pygmie took my hand
And rattled me fast to a
silver strand,
Where the little brown Pygmie boys and girls
Are
cradled and rocked to sleep in pearls._
_And the Pygmies flattered me

soft and low,
'You are tall; be King of us, Gipsy Joe.'_
"_I governed them well for half-a-year,
But it came to an end, and
now I'm here.
Oh, I've opened the gates and cleared the bar,
And
I've come, I've come to my friends from far.
I'm old and broken, I'm
lame and tired,
But I've come to the friends my soul desired._
"_So it's watches and lockets, and who will buy?
It's ribbon and lace,
and they're not priced high.
If you're out for a ring or a golden chain

You can't look over my tray in vain:
And here is a balsam made of
drops
From a tree that's grown by the AEthiops!_
"_I've a chip of the tooth of a mastodont
That's sure to give you the
girl you want.
I've a packet of spells to make men sigh
For the
lustrous glance of your liquid eye--
But it's much too dark for such
wondrous wares,
So back, stand back, while I light my flares!_"
Then he lit a match, but his fingers fumbled,
And, striking his foot on
a stone, he stumbled;
And the match, released by the sudden shock,

Fell in flame on the old wood-block,
And burnt there very quietly--

But before you could have counted three,
Hardly giving you time to
shout,
A red-blue column of fire shot out,
Up and up and ever
higher,
A marvellous burst of raging fire,
Lighting the crowd that
shrank from its flashes,
And so decreasing,
And suddenly ceasing
As the seat of