ve me my fee," she said.--

"I will give you a jewel of gold."--
"Not so; gold is heavy and cold."--
"I will give you a velvet fold
Of foreign work your beauty to deck."--
"Better I like my kerchief rolled
Light and white round my neck."--

"Nay," cried he, "but fix your own fee."--
She laughed, "You may give the full moon to me;
Or else sit under this apple-tree
Here for one idle day by my side;
After that I'll let you go free,
And the world is wide."

Loath to stay, but to leave her slack,
He half turned away, then he quite turned back:
For courtesy's sake he could not lack
To redeem his own royal pledge;
Ahead, too, the windy heaven lowered black
With a fire-cloven edge.

So he stretched his length in the apple-tree shade,
Lay and laughed and talked to the maid,
Who twisted her hair in a cunning braid,
And writhed it in shining serpent-coils,
And held him a day and night fast laid
In her subtle toils.

At the death of night and the birth of day,
When the owl left off his sober play,
And the bat hung himself out of the way,
Woke the song of mavis and merle,
And heaven put off its hodden gray
For mother-o'-pearl.

Peeped up daisies here and there,
Here, there, and everywhere;
Rose a hopeful lark in the air,
Spreading out towards the sun his breast;
While the moon set solemn and fair
Away in the west.

"Up, up, up," called the watchman lark,
In his clear reveillee: "Hearken, O hark!
Press to the high goal, fly to the mark.
Up, O sluggard, new morn is born;
If still asleep when the night falls dark,
Thou must wait a second morn."

"Up, up, up," sad glad voices swelled:
"So the tree falls and lies as it's felled.
Be thy bands loosed, O sleeper, long held
In sweet sleep whose end is not sweet.
Be the slackness girt and the softness quelled
And the slowness fleet."

Off he set. The grass grew rare,
A blight lurked in the darkening air,
The very moss grew hueless and spare,
The last daisy stood all astunt;
Behind his back the soil lay bare,
But barer in front.

A land of chasm and rent, a land
Of rugged blackness on either hand:
If water trickled, its track was tanned
With an edge of rust to the chink;
If