tain heads have lost the light,
Soon they couch them. Night--'t is night.

Sigismund dreaming delightsomely after his haying.
('Sleep of the labouring man,' quoth King David, 'is sweet.')
'Sigismund, Sigismund'--'Who is this calling and saying
"Sigismund, Sigismund," O blessed night do not fleet.

Is it not dark--ay, methinks it is dark, I would slumber,
O I would rest till the swallow shall chirp 'neath mine eaves.'
'Sigismund, Sigismund,' multitudes now without number
Calling, the noise is as dropping of rain upon leaves.

'Ay,' quoth he dreaming, 'say on, for I, Sigismund, hear ye.'
'Sigismund, Sigismund, all the knights weary full sore.
Come back, King Sigismund, come, they shall love thee and fear thee,
The people cry out O come back to us, reign evermore.

The new king is dead, and we will not his son, no nor brother,
Come with thy queen, is she busy yet, kneading of cakes?
Sigismund, show us the boy, is he safe, and his mother,
Sigismund?'--dreaming he falls into laughter and wakes.

L.

And men say this dream came true,
For he walking in the dew
Turned aside while yet was red
On the highest mountain head,
Looking how the wheat he set
Flourished. And the knights him met
And him prayed 'Come again,
Sigismund our king, and reign.'
But at first--at first they tell
How it liked not Malva well;
She must leave her belted bees
And the kids that she did rear.
When she thought on it full dear
Seemed her home. It did not please
Sigismund that he must go
From the wheat that he did sow;
When he thought on it his mind
Was not that should any bind
Into sheaves that wheat but he,
Only he; and yet they went,
And it may be were content.
And they won a nation's heart;
Very well they played their part.
They ruled with sceptre and diadem,
And their children after them.

THE MAID-MARTYR.

Only you'd have me speak.
Whether to speak
Or whether to be silent is all one;
Whether to sleep and in my dreaming front
Her small scared face forlorn; whether to wake
And muse upon her small soft feet that paced
The hated, hard, inhospitable stone--
I say all's one. But you would have me speak,
And change one sorrow for the other. Ay,
Right reverend father, comfortable father,
Old, long in thrall, and wearied of the cell,
So will I here--here staring through the grate,
Whence, sheer beneath us lying the little town,
Her street appears a riband up the ris