ason and we were never able after that first
spring to distinguish him with certainty among our robin callers. None
the less he had made the summer and all summers happier for us by his
gracious though guarded pardon for our unkindness.

"Truth never fails her servant, sir, nor leaves him
With the day's shame upon him,"

and even over wild-bird tradition and matrimonial tyranny the truth of
our love for Robin Hood, its single lapse forgiven, had prevailed.

WHY THE SPIRE FELL

Our Emperor built a marble church
So holy never a bird might perch
On cross or crocket or gilded crown,
A fretted minster of far renown,
But still the spire came crashing down.

_They stoned the swallow and limed the lark;
A rosy throat was an easy mark;
The tiniest wren that built her nest
In Christ's own halo, on Mary's breast,
Was scared away like a demon guest._

Once, twice, thrice, the glistening spire
That soared from the central tower, higher
Than all its clustered pinnacles, fell,
And not one of the carven saints could tell
The cause, though the emperor quizzed them well.

Down in the cloister all strewn with chips
Of alabaster and ivory tips
Of pastoral staffs and angel wings,
In a rainbow ruin of sacred things
He held high court in the way of kings.

_All the while in a royal rage
He pelted with fragments of foliage,
Curly acanthus and vineleaf scroll,
Finial, dogtooth and aureole,
The linnets and finches who came to condole._

Crowned with a cobwebby cardinal's hat
That swooped from the vaulted roof like a bat,
On a tilted porphyry plinth for a throne,
The emperor summoned in thunder tone
The hallowed folk of metal and stone.

Martyrs, apostles, one and all,
Tiptoed down from the quaking wall;
Crusaders, uncrossing their legs of brass,
Sprang from their tombs; over crackle of glass
Balaam rode on a headless ass.

But not one of the sculptured cavalcade
Flocking from choir and creamy facade,
Deep-arched portal and pillared aisle
Had a word on his lips, though all the while
Gentle St. Francis was seen to smile.

_Whistles, chuckles, warbles tried
To give the answer the saints denied;
Gurgles, tinkles, twitters, trills,
Carols wild as wayward rills
Troubadouring daffodils._

St. Peter, high in his canopied niche