heir way is not my way--_
_Tell them England hath taken me!_

_Kings and Princes and Barons famed,_
_Knights and Captains in your degree;_
_Hear me a little before I am blamed--_
_Seeing England hath taken me!_

_Howso great man's strength be reckoned,_
_There are two things he cannot flee;_
_Love is the first, and Death is the second--_
_And Love, in England, hath taken me!_

THE KNIGHTS OF THE JOYOUS VENTURE

HARP SONG OF THE DANE WOMEN

_What is a woman that you forsake her,_
_And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,_
_To go with the old grey Widow-maker_?

_She has no house to lay a guest in--_
_But one chill bed for all to rest in,_
_That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in._

_She has no strong white arms to fold you,_
_But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you_
_Bound on the rocks where the tide has rolled you._

_Yet, when the signs of summer thicken,_
_And the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken,_
_Yearly you turn from our side, and sicken--_

_Sicken again for the shouts and the slaughters,_
_You steal away to the lapping waters,_
_And look at your ship in her winter quarters._

_You forget our mirth, and talk at the tables,_
_The kine in the shed and the horse in the stables--_
_To pitch her sides and go over her cables!_

_Then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow:_
_And the sound of your oar-blades falling hollow,_
_Is all we have left through the months to follow!_

_Ah, what is Woman that you forsake her,_
_And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,_
_To go with the old grey Widow-maker?_

THE KNIGHTS OF THE JOYOUS VENTURE

It was too hot to run about in the open, so Dan asked their friend, old
Hobden, to take their own dinghy from the pond and put her on the brook at
the bottom of the garden. Her painted name was the _Daisy_, but for
exploring expeditions she was the _Golden Hind_ or the _Long Serpent_, or
some such suitable name. Dan hiked and howked with a boat-hook (the brook
was too narrow for sculls), and Una punted with a piece of hop-pole. When
they came to a very shallow place (the _Golden Hind_ drew quite three
inches of water) they disembarked and scuffled her over the gravel by her
tow-rope, and when they reached the overgrown banks beyond the garden they
pulled themselves up stream by the low branches.

That day they intended to discover the North Cape lik