, YOU OLD GIPSY MAN

Time, you old gipsy man,
Will you not stay,
Put up your caravan
Just for one day?

All things I'll give you
Will you be my guest,
Bells for your jennet
Of silver the best,
Goldsmiths shall beat you
A great golden ring,
Peacocks shall bow to you,
Little boys sing,
Oh, and sweet girls will
Festoon you with may,
Time, you old gipsy,
Why hasten away?

Last week in Babylon,
Last night in Rome,
Morning, and in the crush
Under Paul's dome;
Under Paul's dial
You tighten your rein,
Only a moment
And off once again;
Off to some city
Now blind in the womb,
Off to another
Ere that's in the tomb.

Time, you old gipsy man,
Will you not stay,
Put up your caravan
Just for one day?

GHOUL CARE

Sour fiend, go home and tell the Pit:
For once you met your master,
A man who carried in his soul
Three charms against disaster,
The Devil and disaster.

Away, away, and tell the tale
And start your whelps a-whining,
Say "In the greenwood of his soul
A lizard's eye was shining,
A little eye kept shining."

Away, away, and salve your sores,
And set your hags a-groaning,
Say "In the greenwood of his soul
A drowsy bee was droning,
A dreamy bee was droning."

Prodigious Bat! Go start the walls
Of Hell with horror ringing,
Say "In the greenwood of his soul
There was a goldfinch singing,
A pretty goldfinch singing."

And then come back, come, if you please,
A fiercer ghoul and ghaster,
With all the glooms and smuts of Hell
Behind you, I'm your master!
You know I'm still your master.

W. G. HOLE

ROOSEVELT-VILLAGE STREET

Nought is there here the eye to strike--
Uncurved canals where barges ply;
A hundred hamlets all alike;

Flat fields that cut an arc of sky
With men and women o'er them bent
Who needs must labour lest they die.

Would any say that lives so spent
Might break, spurred on by love and pride,
Their bars of animal content?

Nay, here live men unvexed, untried--
I mused. Yet pacing Roosevelt street
In idle humour I espied

A village man and woman meet,
And pass with never word or sign--
So strange in neighbour-folk whose feet

Haunt the same fields in rain and shine
That, curious eyed, in either face,
In curve of lip, or graven line,

I sought for hints of pain or trace
Of harsh resolve, and so grew ware
That hers was as a hiding place

Where lurked the kinship of despair;
While his bore record