IF I had but two little wings

And were a little feathery bird,

To you I'd fly, my dear!
But thoughts like these are idle things,
And I stay here.

But in my sleep to you I fly:

I'm always with you in my sleep!

The world is all one's own.

But then one wakes, and where am I?
All, all alone.

Sleep stays not, though a monarch bids:
So I love to wake ere break of day:
For though my sleep be gone,

Yet while 'tis dark, one shuts one's lids,

And still dreams on.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

30

I REMEMBER

I REMEMBER, I remember,
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;

He never came a wink too soon,
Nor brought too long a day;
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away.

I remember, I remember,
The roses, red and white,
The violets, and the lily-cups!—
Those flowers made of light!
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set

The laburnum on his birth-day,-
The tree is living yet!

I remember, I remember,

Where I used to swing,

And thought the air must rush as fresh

To swallows on the wing;

My spirit flew in feathers then,

That is so heavy now,

And summer pools could hardly cool

The fever on my brow!

I remember, I remember,

The fir trees dark and high;

I used to think their slender tops

Were close against the sky:

It was a childish ignorance,

But now 'tis little joy

To know I'm farther off from Heaven

Than when I was a boy.

THOMAS HOOD

31

MIDNIGHT ON THE GREAT

WESTERN

IN the third-class seat sat the journeying boy,
And the roof-lamp's oily flame

Played down on his listless form and face,
Bewrapt past knowing to what he was going,
Or whence he came.

In the band of his hat the journeying boy
Had a ticket stuck; and a string
Around his neck bore the key of his box,
That twinkled gleams of the lamp's sad beams
Like a living thing.

What past can be yours, O journeying boy
Towards a world unknown,

Who calmly, as if incurious quite
On all at stake, can undertake

This plunge alone?

Knows your soul a sphere, O journeying boy,

Our rude realms far above,

Whence with spacious vision you mark and mete
This region of sin that you find you in,

But are not of?

THOMAS HARDY

32

THE RUNAWAY

ONCE when the sun of the year was beginning to fall
We stopped by a mountain pasture to say, "Whose colt?"
A little Morgan had one forefoot on the wall,
The other curled at his heart. He dipped his head
And snorted to us; and then he had to bolt.
We heard the muffled thunder when he fled

And we saw him or thought we saw him dim and grey
Like a shadow against the curtain of falling flakes.
We said, "The little fellow's afraid of the snow.
He isn't winter broken." "It isn't play

With the little fellow at all. He's running away.
I doubt if even his mother could tell him, 'Sakes,
It's only weather.' He'd think she didn't know.
Where is his mother? He can't be out alone."
And now he comes again with a clatter of stone
And mounts the wall again with whited eyes
And all his tail that isn't hair up straight.
He shudders his coat as if to throw off flies.
Whoever it is that leaves him out so late
When everything else has gone to stall and bin
Ought to be told to go and bring him in.

ROBERT FROST

333

ON EASTNOR KNOLL

SILENT are the woods, and the dim green boughs are
Hushed in the twilight; yonder, in the path through
The apple orchard, is a tired plough-boy

Calling the cows home.

A bright white star blinks, the pale moon rounds, but
Still the red, lurid wreckage of the sunset

Smoulders in smoky fire, and burns on

The misty hill-tops.

Ghostly it grows, and darker, the burning
Fades into smoke, and now the gusty oaks are
A silent army of phantoms thronging

A land of shadows.

JOHN MASEField

34 "HOME NO MORE HOME TO ME"

HOME no more home to me, whither must I wander?
Hunger my driver, I go where I must.

Cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather;
Thick drives the rain, and my roof is in the dust.
Loved of wise men was the shade of my roof-tree.

The true word of welcome was spoken in the doorDear days of old, with the faces in the firelight,

Kind folks of old, you come again no more.

Home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces,
Home was home then, my dear, happy for the child,
Fire and the windows bright glittered on the moorland;
Song, tuneful song, built a palace in the wild.
Now, when day dawns on the brow of the moorland,
Lone stands the house, and the chimney-stone is cold.
Lone let it stand, now the friends are all departed,

The kind hearts, the true hearts, that loved the place
of old.

Spring shall come, come again, calling up the moor-fowl, Spring shall bring the sun and rain, bring the bees and flowers;

Red shall the heather bloom over hill and valley,

Soft flow the stream through the even-flowing hours; Fair the day shine as it shone on my childhoodFair shine the day on the house with open door; Birds come and cry there and twitter in the chimney— But I go for ever and come again no more.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

35

DALYAUNCE

Mundus. Welcome, fayre chylde, what is thy name?

Infans.

I wote not, syr, withouten blame.
But ofte tyme my moder in her game
Called me dalyaunce.

Mundus. Dalyaunce, my swetě chylde,

It is a name that is ryght wylde,

For whan thou waxest olde.

It is a name of no substaunce

But, my fayre chylde, what woldest thou have?