Part 8 (1/2)

EXMOOR VERSES

I. VASHTI'S SONG

Over the rim of the Moor, And under the starry sky, Two men came to my door And rested them thereby.

Beneath the bough and the star, In a whispering foreign tongue, They talked of a land afar And the merry days so young!

Beneath the dawn and the bough I heard them arise and go: And my heart it is aching now For the more it will never know.

Why did they two depart Before I could understand?

Where lies that land, O my heart?

--O my heart, where lies that land?

II. SATURN

From my farm, from her farm Furtively we came.

In either home a hearth was warm: We nursed a hungrier flame.

Our feet were foul with mire, Our faces blind with mist; But all the night was naked fire About us where we kiss'd.

To her farm, to my farm, Loathing we returned; Pale beneath a gallow's arm The planet Saturn burned.

III. DERELICTION

O'er the tears that we shed, dear The bitter vines twist, And the hawk and the red deer They keep where we kiss'd: All broken lies the s.h.i.+eling That sheltered from rain, With a star to pierce the ceiling, And the dawn an empty pane.

Thro' the mist, up the moorway, Fade hunters and pack; From the ridge to thy doorway Happy voices float back ...

O, between the threads o' mist, love, Reach your hands from the house.

Only mind that we kiss'd, love, And forget the broken vows!

TWO FOLK SONGS

I. THE SOLDIER

(_Roumanian_)

_When winter trees bestrew the path, Still to the twig a leaf or twain Will cling and weep, not Winter's wrath, But that foreknown forlorner pain-- To fall when green leaves come again._

I watch'd him sleep by the furrow-- The first that fell in the fight.

His grave they would dig to-morrow: The battle called them to-night.