The thought unworthy of these august events, My uncle was abashed. And, truth to tell, The rhymes were mellow, though here and there he swerved From truth to make them so. Nor would he change 'June' to 'July' for all that we could say. 'I never said the month was June,' he cried, 'And if I did, Shakespeare hath jumped an age! Gods, will you hedge me round with thirty nights? "June" rhymes with "moon"!' With that, he flung them down And strode away like Lucifer, and was gone, Before old Scarlet could approach again The matter of that four-pence. Yet his rhymes Have caught the very colours of that night! I can see through them, Ay, just as through our cottage window-panes, Can see the great black coach, Carrying the dead queen past our garden-gate. The roses bobbing and fluttering to and fro, Hide, and yet show the more by hiding, half. And, like smoked glass through which you see the sun, The song shows truest when it blurs the truth. This is the way it goes." He rose to his feet, Picked up his spade, and struck an attitude, Leaning upon it. "I've got to feel my spade, Or I'll forget it. This is the way I speak it. Always." And, with a schoolboy's rigid face, And eyes fixed on the rafters, he began, Sing-song, the pedlar-poet's bunch of rhymes:-- As I went by the cattle-shed The grey dew dimmed the grass, And, under a twisted apple-tree, Old Robin Scarlet stood by me. "Keep watch! Keep watch to-night," he said, "There's things 'ull come to pass. "Keep watch until the moon has cleared The thatch of yonder rick; Then I'll come out of my cottage-door To wait for the coach of a queen once more; And--you'll say nothing of what you've heard, But rise and follow me quick." "And what 'ull I see if I keep your trust, And wait and watch so late?" "Pride," he said, "and Pomp," he said, "Beauty to haunt you till you're dead, And Glorious Dust that goes to dust, Passing the white farm-gate. "You are young and all for adventure, lad, And the great tales to be told: This night, before the clock strike one, Your lordliest hour will all be done; But you'll remember it and be glad, In the days when you are old!" All in the middle of the night, My face was at the pane; When, creeping out of his cottage-door, To wait for the coach of a queen once more, Old Scarlet, in the moon-light, Beckoned to me again. He stood beneath a lilac-spray, Like Father Time for dole, In Reading Tawny cloak and hood, With mattock and with spade he stood, And, far away to southward, A bell began to toll.