Childhood, stunted in the shadow
Of the light-debarring walls :
Not for you the cuckoo calls
O'er the silver-threaded meadow;
Not for you the lark on high
Pours his music from the sky.

Ah! you have your music too!
And come flocking round that player
Grinding at his organ there,
Summer-eyed and swart of hue,
Rattling off his well-worn tune
On this April afternoon.

Lovely April lights of pleasure
Flit o'er want-beclouded features
Of these little outcast creatures,
As they swing with rhythmic measure,
In the courage of their rags,
Lightly o'er the slippery flags.

Little footfalls, lightly glancing
In a luxury of motion,
Supple as the waves of ocean
In your elemental dancing,
How you fly, and wheel, and spin,
For
your hearts too dance within.

Dance along with mirth and laughter,
Buoyant, fearless, and elate,
Dancing in the teeth of fate,
Ignorant of your hereafter
That with all its tragic glooms
Blindly on your future looms.

Past and future, hence away!
Joy, diffused throughout the earth,

Centre in this moment's mirth

Of ecstatic holiday:

Once in all their lives' dark story,

Touch them, Fate! with April glory.

THE DEAD.

THE dead abide with us! Though stark and cold
Earth seems to grip them, they are with us still :
They have forged our chains of being for good or ill;
And their invisible hands these hands yet hold.
Our perishable bodies are the mould

In which their strong imperishable will —
Mortality's deep yearning to fulfil —

Hath grown incorporate through dim time untold.

Vibrations infinite of life in death,

As a star's travelling light survives its star!
So may we hold our lives, that when we are
The fate of those who then will draw this breath,
They shall not drag us to their judgment bar,
And curse the heritage which we bequeath.

SEBASTIAN EVANS.

ARNAUD de merveIL.

AT THE ABBEY GATE.

MAY I not sing, then? Do I ask too much?
Pray you, forgive me, Father! Yet I ween
No longer since than summer I could touch

My citole to a tune could charm a queen
To hear and crown me for the lays I wove:

Though well I wot, the tune of 'Time hath been,' Fair Father Abbot, hath less might to move.

Yea, steel is strong, and gold more strong than steel, And love than gold, and art more strong than love, Yet 't is not strongest! Nay, I live to feel That a king's envy is more strong than art.

We, I and King Alfonso of Castile, Were lovers of one lady-wherefore start?

I am a homeless waif, and only claim
A few hours' house-room for a broken heart:
Yet, Father, 't is of right I set my name
Where she hath set my love- before the king's;

For I am Arnaud de Merveil,—the same,

If aught remain the same of earthly things,

The same, none other though I walk forlorn And even the uplandish yeoman slights the strings That shook five kingdoms now my robes are torn, And deems a groat too lavish for my lay.

Father, I fain would rest me here till morn,

Being faint and footsore: pray you, let me stay!

By Him the Wandering Jew forbade to rest,
Send me not forth this night upon my way!
I crave no largess save to be your guest
For this one night—unless it be the prayer

Of these pure brethren for a soul distressed.
I will requite you: - Mine are lays more rare

Than Bertrand ever babbled - Tush!

I boast

And am a beggar! Yet if thou canst spare
One half-hour from devotion, good mine host,
And these fair brethren who perchance have strayed

No farther from the cloister than the coast,

And less are wont in gallant masquerade

Of courts and camps than thou and I to standWill deign to hear such music as I made,

I will essay a tale could once command

The ears of queens and kings in hall and bower -
Ho, boy, there! Give the citole to my hand!

Once, I remember, by the Garden Tower

Were three king's daughters playing at the ball; I crossed the lawn, and plucked a lily-flower

And waved it as I strode. They knew the call And followed, laughing: one had slipped her shoe And stayed to right it nigh the pleasaunce wall.

Then sang I how a king's son went to woo

The Lady of the Waste Lands by the Sea,
Unweeting of the weird whereby she threw

Each morn her womanhood aside, to be
Till evening glimmered over brake and thorn,
A milk-white hind under the greenwood tree.
And all a summer day with hound and horn

By ford and fell he chased that spotless hide;
Till, smit by shaft too sure, his love forlorn
Fled to a wild cell by the wailing tide

Mid spiky grass half-buried in the sand,

Where, peering through the casement-chink, he spied A weeping breathless maiden, her right hand

Stanching an arrow-hurt on her round arm: And in the sundown of that dreary strand,

Knew her he loved, and how he had wrought her harm, And, shamed to threefold fondness by the feat, Kissed her the kiss that snapped the baleful charm. And then I sang them how a rustling fleet Of cygnets sailing from the Norland fords Stooped on a mountain mere one May day sweet, Where, with a chanted charming of strange words, The swan-skins fell from their white womanhood Among the sunlit shallows. Then with swords Men came to slay them, but the wailing brood Donned once again their feathers and were gone Into the sky, far from those men of blood,

Back to their Norland homestead — all save one,
That lost her swan-gear in the treacherous reeds,
And she so fair, so pitiful, that none

Of those rude sworders, swift to murderous deeds,
But fain would bear her to his town as bride.
And in their hearts, like wind among the gledes,
Love kindled wrath, and even from undern-tide,
Each fought on other till the sun was low:
And one alone among his peers who died
Was left to woo that Sister of the Snow.

And thus they wedded: — but upon a day
The swans again came sailing all arow,

And when they brought her wings to flee away,
There was no charm in love's sweet fellowships,
No kiss of spouse nor babe could bid her stay.
Then would I tell of one on haws and hips
Starving among the woods, an Outlaw bold,
To whom, the word sans pardon on his lips,
The fiend, Dame Venus, proffered wealth untold,

ΙΟ