and nearer! Her face was like a light!
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him--with her death.

8

He turned; he spurred him Westward; he did not know who stood
Bowed with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!
Not till the dawn he heard it, and slowly blanched to hear
How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in
the darkness there.

9

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him, and his rapier
brandished high!
Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden moon; wine-red
was his velvet coat;
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch
of lace at his throat.

* * * * *

_And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,_
_When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,_
_When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,_
_A highwayman comes riding--_
_Riding--riding--_
_A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door._

10

_Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard;_
_And he taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is
locked and barred;_
_He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there_
_But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,_
_Bess, the landlord's daughter,_
_Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair._

THE BLUE CLOSET: WILLIAM MORRIS

THE DAMOZELS

Lady Alice, Lady Louise,
Between the wash of the tumbling seas
We are ready to sing, if so you please;
So lay your long hands on the keys;
Sing "_Laudate pueri._"

_And ever the great bell overhead_
_Boom'd in the wind a knell for the dead,_
_Though no one toll'd it, a knell for the dead._

LADY LOUISE

Sister, let the measure swell
Not too loud; for you sing not well
If you drown the faint boom of the bell;
He is weary, so am I.

_And ever the chevron overhead_
_Flapp'd on the banner of the dead;_
(_Was he asleep, or was he dead?_)

LADY ALICE

Alice the Queen, and Louise the Queen,
Two da