Thus, I exclaim against you, profiteer.... For purpled evenings spent in pleasing toil, Should you have gained so easily the dear Capricious largesse of the miser soil? Colorful living in a world grown dull, Quiet sufficiency in weakling days, Delicate happiness, more beautiful For lighting up belittered, grimy ways-- Surely I think I shall remember this, You in your old, rough dress, bedaubed with clay, Your smudgy face parading happiness, Life’s puzzle solved. Perhaps, in turn, you may. One time, while clipping bushes, tending vines, (Making your brave, sly mock at dastard days,) Laugh gently at these trivial, truthful lines-- And that will be sufficient for my praise. SALUTAMUS (O Gentlemen the time of Life is short--Henry IV) The bitterness of days like these we know; Much, much we know, yet cannot understand What was our crime that such a searing brand Not of our choosing, keeps us hated so. Despair and disappointment only grow, Whatever seeds are planted from our hand, What though some roads wind through a gladsome land? It is a gloomy path that we must go. And yet we know relief will come some day For these seared breasts; and lads as brave again Will plant and find a fairer crop than ours. It must be due our hearts, our minds, our powers; These are the beacons to blaze out the way. _We must plunge onward; onward, gentlemen_.... CHALLENGE I said, in drunken pride of youth and you That mischief-making Time would never dare Play his ill-humoured tricks upon us two, Strange and defiant lovers that we were. I said that even Death, Highwayman Death, Could never master lovers such as we, That even when his clutch had throttled breath, My hymns would float in praise, undauntedly. I did not think such words were bravado. Oh, I think honestly we knew no fear, Of Time or Death. We loved each other so. And thus, with you believing me, I made My prophecies, rebellious, unafraid.... And that was foolish, wasn’t it, my dear? RETURN I have gone back in boyish wonderment To things that I had foolishly put by.... Have found an alien and unknown content In seeing how some bits of cloud-filled sky Are framed in bracken pools; through chuckling hours Have watched the antic frogs, or curiously Have numbered all the unnamed, vagrant flowers, That fleck the unkempt meadows, lavishly. Or where a headlong toppling stream has stayed Its racing, lulled to quiet by the song Bursting from out the thickleaved oaken shade, There I have lain while hours sauntered past-- I have found peacefulness somewhere at last, Have found a quiet needed for so long. CLARISSA SCOTT DELANY