And then my eyes went dim. The Marshal's gun was out. I saw the grim Short barrel, and his face Aflame with the excitement of the chase. He was an honest sportsman, as they go. He never shot a doe, Or spotted fawn, Or partridge on the ground. And, as for Joe, He'd wait until he had a yard to go. Then, if he missed, he'd laugh and call it square. My gaze leapt to the corner--waited there. And now an arm would reach it. I saw hope flare Across the runner's face. Then, like a pang In my own heart, The pistol rang. The form I watched soared forward, spun the curve. "By God, you've missed!" The Marshal shook his head. No, there he lay, face downward in the road. "I reckon he was dead Before he hit the ground," The Marshal said. "Just once, at fifty feet, A moving target too. That's just about as good As any man could do! A little tough; But, since he ran, I call it fair enough." He mopped his head, and started down the road. The silence eddied round him, turned and flowed Slowly back and pressed against the ears. Until unnumbered flies set it to droning, And, down the heat, I heard a woman moaning. D.H. [7] "Contemporary Verse," prize poem for 1921. ECLIPSE Once melodies of street-cries washed these walls, Glad as the refluent song Of cheerful waters from a happy spring That shout their way along; Such cries were born in other days from lips A spirit taught to sing. Now it is gone! Memory expects those hymns for shrimp and prawn, Or the mellifluous chaunt from the black gorge Of Orpheus inside a murky skin, Who looked the gold sun in the eye While garden mists grew thin, And intoned "_Hoppin' John_!" As when the shadow of the gray eclipse Haggards the countryside, When moon-fooled birds have nothing more to say, And soft untimely bats begin to slide; As darkness sweeps the morning light away, So silence brushes music now from lips. Oh! Can it be the songless spirit of this age Has slain the ancient music, or that ears Have harsher thresholds? Only this I know: The streets grow more discordant with the years; And that which bids the huckster sing no more, Will drive the flower-woman from the door. H.A. EDGAR ALLAN POE[8] Once in the starlight When the tides were low, And the surf fell sobbing To the undertow, I trod the windless dunes Alone with Edgar Poe. Dim and far behind us, Like a fabled bloom On the myrtle thickets, In the swaying gloom Hung the clustered windows Of the barrack-room. Faint on the evening Tenuous and far As the beauty shaken From a vagrant star, Throbbed the ache and passion Of an old guitar.