Volume Iii Part 2 (1/2)

We need much patience, well she knew, And out and out, and through and through, When we would gentlefolk address, However we may seek to bless: At times they hide them like the beasts From sacred beams; and mostly priests.

x.x.x

He gave no sign of making bare, Nor she of faintness or despair.

Inflamed with hope that she might win, If she but coaxed him to begin, She used all arts for making fain; The mother with her babe was Jane.

x.x.xI

Now stamped the Squire, and knowing not Her business, waved her from the spot.

Encircled by the men of might, The head of Jane, like flickering light, As in a charger, they beheld Ere she was from the park expelled.

x.x.xII

Her grief, in jumps of earthly weight, Did Jane around communicate: For that the moment when began The holy but mistaken man, In view of light, to take his lift, They cut him from her charm adrift!

x.x.xIII

And he was lost: a banished face For ever from the ways of grace, Unless pinched hard by dreams in fright.

They saw the Bishop's wavering sprite Within her look, at come and go, Long after he had caused her woe.

x.x.xIV

Her greying eyes (until she sank At Fredsham on the wayside bank, Like cinder heaps that whitened lie From coals that shot the flame to sky) Had gla.s.sy vacancies, which yearned For one in memory discerned.

x.x.xV

May those who ply the tongue that cheats, And those who rush to beer and meats, And those whose mean ambition aims At palaces and t.i.tled names, Depart in such a cheerful strain As did our Jump-to-glory Jane!

x.x.xVI

Her end was beautiful: one sigh.

She jumped a foot when it was nigh.

A lily in a linen clout She looked when they had laid her out.

It is a lily-light she bears For England up the ladder-stairs.

THE RIDDLE FOR MEN

I

This Riddle rede or die, Says History since our Flood, To warn her sons of power:- It can be truth, it can be lie; Be parasite to twist awry; The drouthy vampire for your blood; The fountain of the silver flower; A brand, a lure, a web, a crest; Supple of wax or tempered steel; The spur to honour, snake in nest: 'Tis as you will with it to deal; To wear upon the breast, Or trample under heel.

II

And rede you not aright, Says Nature, still in red Shall History's tale be writ!

For solely thus you lead to light The trailing chapters she must write, And pa.s.s my fiery test of dead Or living through the furnace-pit: Dislinked from who the softer hold In grip of brute, and brute remain: Of whom the woeful tale is told, How for one short Sultanic reign, Their bodies lapse to mould, Their souls behowl the plain.

THE SAGE ENAMOURED AND THE HONEST LADY

I

One fairest of the ripe unwedded left Her shadow on the Sage's path; he found, By common signs, that she had done a theft.

He could have made the sovereign heights resound With questions of the wherefore of her state: He on far other but an hour before Intent. And was it man, or was it mate, That she disdained? or was there haply more?

About her mouth a placid humour slipped The dimple, as you see smooth lakes at eve Spread melting rings where late a swallow dipped.