FOR A CHARITY ANNUAL

N Angel-Court the sunless air

IN

Grows faint and sick; to left and right The cowering houses shrink from sight, Huddled and hopeless, eyeless, bare.

Misnamed, you say? For surely rare
Must be the angel-shapes that light
In Angel-Court!

Nay! the Eternities are there.

Death at the doorway stands to smite; Life in its garrets leaps to light;

And Love has climbed that crumbling stair

In Angel-Court.

FOR A COPY OF "THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD"

Y GOLDSMITH's tomb the City's cry

BY

Grows faint and distant; now no more, From that famed street he trod of yore, Men turn where those old Templars lie!

Only some dreamer such as I

Pauses awhile from dust and roar

By GOLDSMITH's tomb!

And then-ah, then!-when none is nigh, What shadowy shapes, unseen before, Troop back again from Lethe's shore!How the ghosts gather then, and sigh

By GOLDSMITH's tomb!

AFTER A HOLIDAY

THR

HREE little ducks by a door, Snuggling aside in the sun; The sweep of a threshing floor,

A flail with its One-two, One;

A shaggy-haired, loose-limbed mare,
Grave as a master at class;
A foal with its heels in the air,
Rolling, for joy, in the grass;

A sunny-eyed, golden-haired lad,
Laughing, astride on a wall;
A collie-dog, lazily glad . .
Why do I think of it all?

Why? From my window I see,

Once more through the dust-dry pane,

The sky like a great Dead Sea,

And the lash of the London rain;

And I read here in London town,

Of a murder done at my gate, And a goodly ship gone down, And of homes made desolate;

And I know, with the old sick heart,
That but for a moment's space,
We may shut our sense, and part
From the pain of this tarrying place.

THE BALLAD OF THE BORE

I

[For Alma Mater's Mirror, 1887]

"Garrulus hunc quando consumet cunque."

-HOR. Sat. ix. lii.

SEE him come from far,

And, sick with hopelessness,

Invoke some kindly star,—
I see him come, not less.
Is there no sure recess
Where hunted men may lie?
Ye Gods, it is too hard!
I feel his glittering eye,-
Defend us from The Bard!

He knows nor let nor bar :
With ever-nearing stress,
Like Juggernaut his car,

I see him onward press;
He waves a huge MS.;
He puts evasion by,

He stands- -as one on guard,
And reads how volubly!-
Defend us from The Bard!