hen steal through gate and gap,
And by strange hedge-rows make their wondering way.

Sometimes great seas of ripening corn they spy
Across whose rippling face
The shadowy billows race
And round the gate, forlornly whispering, die;

Or in dark rutted lanes by weeds o'ergrown,
Round-eyed they watch a thrush
That breaks the noonday hush
Dashing with zest a snail against a stone;

At others, on an impulse waxing brave,
They climb the churchyard wall
And, marvelling at it all,
See strange black people gathered round a grave.

Then, without question, hurrying up the lane,
They seek once more their own--
That world in which is known
No fear of death, nor thought of change or pain.

Where still they call and answer, still they play,
And summer is ever there;
But I--I never dare
Pass through those fields, retrace the well-known way,

Lest I might meet a lad whom once I knew,
Whose eyes accusingly
Should make demand of me:
"Where are those dreams I left in charge with you?"

CAPTIVE IN LONDON TOWN

There comes a ghostly space
'Twixt midnight and the dawn,
When from the heart of London Town
The tides of life are drawn.

What time, when Spring is due,
The captives dungeoned deep
Beneath the stones of London Town
Grow troubled in their sleep,

And wake--mint, mallow, dock,
Brambles in bondage sore,
And grasses shut in London Town
A thousand years and more.

Yet though beneath the stones
They starve, and overhead
The countless feet pace London Town
Of men who hold them dead,

Like Samson, blind and scorned,
In pain their time they bide
To seize the roots of London Town
And tumble down its pride.

Now well by proof and sign,
By men unheard, unseen,
They know that far from London Town
The woods once more are green.

But theirs is still to wait,
Deaf to the myriad hum,
Beneath the stones of London Town
A Spring that needs must come.

LAURENCE HOUSMAN

THE FELLOW-TRAVELLERS

Fellow-travellers here with me,
Loose for good each other's loads!
Here we come to the cross-roads:
Here must parting be.

Where will you five be to-night?
Where shall I? we little know:
Loosed from you, I let you go
Utterly from sight.

Far away go taste and touch,
Far go sight, and sound, and smell.
Fellow-Travellers, fare you well,--
You I loved so much.

THE SETTLERS

How