And still, to my undoing,

He wins me with his wooing, To buy his ware

With all its care,

Its sorrow and undoing.

A Ballad.

In winter, afternoons are short;
It was a winter afternoon.

The milking was already done;
I took my man, I took my gun,
That we might have some sport.

We stooped behind the tallest brake;
There was a bush of golden furze;
The furze has scent so rich and full
It makes the sense a little dull:
I hardly felt awake.

Oh, could it be the whir of game,
That sudden, little spring of noise?
Robin was shouting in the wind;
He must have left me far behind,
So faint his whistle came.

I felt the bushes with my hand:
There was a certain furrowed nook-
The gorse with fire was black and brown,
But there the music drew me down

Into a clear, white land.

There was more grass than I could see;

The grass was marked with pale, green rings; And oh, the sudden joy I felt

To see them dancing at full pelt,

The whole Fair Family!

We did not touch the pale, green rings;
I think we eddied through the air;
A swirl of dew was in my face,
And, looking downward, I could trace
The mark of pale, green rings.

The measure scarcely was begun :
I could have danced a hundred years!
But Robin, he would surely scoff—
Straightway I broke the measure off:
My eyes blinked in the sun.

If Robin should be come to harm!
I looked for him to left, to right:
In winter, afternoons are short-
It was too late to think of sport;
I turned back to the farm.

My mother all the tale should know.
How thick the trees above the hedge!
There was a pond that I must pass;
I looked in it as in a glass;

My hair was white as snow.

The servants saw me pass and smiled;
But that was not the worst, for when
I looked in at the parlour door
The children rose up from the floor:
I had no wife or child.

They gathered round me in a flock;
The mistress jeered. But who was he,
That old man with the bald, bent head?
Oh, he would know I had been dead,
He would not feel the shock!

His master was away from home,
He said, and rose to give me food;
"But my old master has been lost
These fifty years." . . . A terror crost
His breast, and he was dumb.

I could not touch the wheaten bread,
So plain I saw the clear, white land.
O, cursed, cursed elfin-race,
Mid living men I have no place,
And yet I am not dead!

I travel on from town to town,
But always by a dusty road,

By market-streets, by booths and fairs:
I have great terror of the snares
Upon the furzy down.

But I must see my home once more,
Nor fear to eat the wheaten bread.
Oh, some day I must see my friend,
And eat with him, and make an end,
For Robin is fourscore.

Cathal of the Woods.

MID the forest and the forest-rocks,
Mid the solitude where flowers are lonesome
In their silent flocks,

Cathal dwelt alone, yet in community:

For such shapes as none may see

Who hath not from all mortal kindred gone,
Fairy-races of the leaf-green sap

Caught him to their quietness and their smiles,
Drew him to the whortle-covert's lap,

Or led through hovering miles

Of May-time leafage, crooned upon

By the dove and murmured through by heaven.

Round him hollies laughed; the peat and pine
Royally smelt together in those lands;
There the moss had little, good, moist hands;
Aspen-catkins bounced in dew and shine;
Sweet-fern heaved the soil

Now with horn or fetlock, now with coil
Of the snake or neck-bend of the swan;

Open windflowers shone,

All their bending flowers innumerably wide.

Low down many birds were singing clear;
High above was the wood's rushing voice.
Cathal lay, and tranquil to his bosom,

Gliding with no fear,

Came the leaf-green Princess of his choice: