,
If only upon some mirk midnight,
When he stands at the door, all wet and wild,
With his owl's feather and dripping hair,
I could lie warm and not care,
I should rid myself of this Changeling yet.

I carried my woe to the Wise Man yonder,
"You sell forgetfulness, they say.
How much to pay
To forget a son who is my sorrow?"

The Wise Man began to ponder.
"Charms have I, many a one,
To make a woman forget her lover,
A man his wife or a fortune fled,
To make the day forget the morrow,
The doer forget the deed he has done,
But a mighty spell must I borrow
To make a woman forget her son,
For this I will take a royal fee.
Your house," said he,
"The storied hangings richly cover,
On your banquet table there were six
Golden branched candlesticks,
And of noble dishes you had a score.
The crown you wore
I remember, the sparkling crown.
All of these,
Madam, you shall pay me down.
Also the day I give you ease
Of golden guineas you pay a hundred."

Laughing I left the Wise Man's door.
Has he found such things where a Changeling sits?
The home is darkened from roof to floor,
The house is naked and ravaged and plundered
Where a Changling sits
On the hearthstone, warming his shivering fits.

He sits at his ease, for he knows well
He can keep his post.
He has left me nothing to pay the cost
Of snatching my heart from his private Hell.

Yet when all is done and told
I am glad the Wise Man in the City
Had no pity
For me, and for him I had no gold.

Because if I did not remember him,
My little child--Ah! What should we have,
He and I? Not even a grave
With a name of his own by the river's brim.
Because if among the poppies gay,
On the hill-side, now my eyes are dim,
I could not fancy a child at play,
And if I should pass by the pool in the quarry
And never see him, a darling ghost,
Sailing a boat there, I should be sorry--
If in the firelit, lone December
I never heard him come scampering post
Haste down the stair--if the soul that is lost
Came back, and I did not remember.

THE POETRY SOCIETY

The objects of the Society, as stated in the Constitution, are to
promote (in the words of Matthew Arnold, adopted as a motto), "a
clearer, deeper sense of the best in poetry and of the strength and joy
to be drawn from it";

To bring together lovers of poetry with a view to extending and
developing the intelligent interest in, and proper app