II.

But ah, no hunter ever heard
Such cries as we let out,
Since you are with me now, my Bird,
With echoes leagued about.

The echoes all take hands and dance
When you set up your song;
The hairy hiders peep and prance
And love and listen long.

The hairy hiders weep their fill
On singing's aftermath
To find the wine-red words you spill
Along the leafy path.

And wine-red words leap up and sing
And high boughs sing for pain
While thrushes wait and hush their wing,
And rivers hush the rain.

And Life it sings of Death deferred
And Death sings lustily,
Since you are with me now, my Bird,
As winds are with the tree.

HIS QUAINTNESS.

The ghosts of Homer and of Herrick, too,
In habit him, the epic and the lyric, too;
Still more, that stalwart, - he that will not down,
The ghost that drew the Hamlet and the clown.
Featest of conjurers, I lately wonder
How you contrived to keep the two asunder!

A merry-andrew grinned a moment since
Where I had turned me to behold my prince;
Who would have dreamed a king so rude in play -
Methought I loved a mountebank today!

But now I met my stateliest in the way
And leaned on Prospero....no such noble luck!
Drubbed by the son of Sycorax, I pluck
Me from his paws and then am pinched of Puck!

I came to lead the royal one to bed
And majesty stood twirling on his head!
Ah, how I fainted with the clown too near -
I closed my sight on that wide, jigging leer!

Starry repenter who then bowed above
My healed eyes... again, the king in love!

MY SKELETON ADDRESSES SOME CHILDREN OF A LATER TIME
WHO PLAY WITH IT.

So, little wantons, pull me out
And rattle these chaste bones about.
A hundred years of moons and suns
Have looked in vain for these poor nuns,
These white and shy and cloistered things
That once were wild as winds and wings.
Loose me from that meshed rust
Of the long, long mouldered hair;
Shake the dust
From mine eyeholes, let me stare
Deeply at the day; the while
You gaze agog at this great smile
That gapes so wide for lack of lip
And gives the laugh without the quip,
Like some poor clown dismay arrests
That has forgotten all his jests.

Now crack my knee-joints merrily
In days when I was called a she
They danced like leaves upon a tree -
Nor did they clack so, deep enough
Sheathed in hyacinthine stuff.
On this bank embroidered well
With many a purple flower-bell

How gaunt the starveling you incline,
Lusty once with meat and wine!
Ah, the dullest dead man knows
Dust's a lean fare for the guest,
And the buxom sluggard grows
Lank with too protracted rest.

Who would think this barred cage
Once held a heart of lovely rage
And ardent rivering veins of man
Through which the great red runner ran!
And who would say that this was one
Who carried high beneath the sun
Proud lips whose words were lutes
And lions, nightingale and dove,
And on her breast two moony fruits
Where the lover leaned to love,
Of princely beauty half afraid!

Now, you little lads and maid,
Without a by-your-leave, or thanks,
Take my shanks
To beat your little drum,
And with little mirth alive
Stick a flower in the dumb
Singer's mouth, and then disband
The mysterious fingers five

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