ow
Than when she made old England one,
--Hundreds of years ago it was!--
Hundreds of years ago.

Rich was the painted page they read
Before that sunset died;
Nut-brown hood by golden head,
Murmuring _Rosa Mystica_,
While nesting thrushes cried.

A Saxon maid with flaxen hair,
And eyes of Sussex grey;
A young monk out of Normandy:--
"May is our Lady's month," he said,
"And O, my love, my May!"

Then over the fallen missal-book
The missel-thrushes sung
Till--_Domus Aurea_--rose the moon
And bells for vespers rung.
It was gold and blue for the old friar,
But hawthorn for the young.

For gown of green and brown hood,
Before that curfew tolled,
Had flown for ever through the wood
--Hundreds of years ago it was!--
But twenty summers old.

And empty stood his chapel stall,
Empty his thin grey cell,
Empty her seat in the Franklin's hall;
And there were swords that searched for them
Before the matin bell.

And, crowders tell, a sword that night
Wrought them an evil turn,
And that the may was not more white
Than those white bones the robin found
Among the roots of fern.

But others tell of stranger things
Half-heard on Whitsun eves,
Of sweet and ghostly whisperings--
Though hundreds of years ago it was--
Among the ghostly leaves:--

_Sero te amavi_--
Grey eyes of sun-lit dew!--
_Tam antiqua, Tam nova_--
Augustine heard it, too.
Late have I loved that May, Lady,
So ancient, and so new!

And no man knows where they were flown,
For the wind takes the may:
But white and fresh the may was blown
--Though hundreds of years ago it was--
As this that blooms to-day.

And the leaves break out on the wild briar,
And bells must still be rung;
But sorrow comes to the old friar,
For he remembers a May, a May,
When his old heart was young.

A FOREST SONG

Who would be a king
That can sit in the sun and sing?
Nay, I have a kingdom of mine own.
A fallen oak-tree is my throne.
_Then, pluck the strings, and tell me true
If Caesar in his glory knew
The worlds he lost in sun and dew._

Who would be a queen
That sees what my love hath seen?--
The blood of little children shed
To make one royal ruby red!
_Then, tell me, music, why the great
For quarrelling trumpets abdicate