He lies there in the sand with his foolish hair all spread about her paws. If she ever finds his secret we will put out his eyes, so that he shall find no more our beautiful things--there are lovely gates in Florence that I fear he will carry away. We have tried to bind him with song and with old customs, but they only held him for a little while, and he has always smitten us and mocked us. When he is blind he shall dance to us and make sport. Great clumsy time shall stumble and dance, who liked to kill little children, and can hurt even the daisies no longer. Then shall our children laugh at him who slew Babylon's winged bulls, and smote great numbers of the gods and fairies--when he is shorn of his hours and his years. We will shut him up in the Pyramid of Cheops, in the great chamber where the sarcophagus is. Thence we will lead him out when we give our feasts. He shall ripen our corn for us and do menial work. We will kiss they painted face, O Sphinx, if thou wilt betray to us Time. And yet I fear that in his ultimate anguish he may take hold blindly of the world and the moon, and slowly pull down upon him the House of Man. THE HEN All along the farmyard gables the swallows sat a-row, twittering uneasily to one another, telling of many things, but thinking only of Summer and the South, for Autumn was afoot and the North wind waiting. And suddenly one day they were all quite gone. And everyone spoke of the swallows and the South. "I think I shall go South myself next year," said a hen. And the year wore on and the swallows came again, and the year wore on and they sat again on the gables, and all the poultry discussed the departure of the hen. And very early one morning, the wind being from the North, the swallows all soared suddenly and felt the wind in their wings; and a strength came upon them and a strange old knowledge and a more than human faith, and flying high they left the smoke of our cities and small remembered eaves, and saw at last the huge and homeless sea, and steering by grey sea-currents went southward with the wind. And going South they went by glittering fog-banks and saw old islands lifting their heads above them; they saw the slow quests of the wandering ships, and divers seeking pearls, and lands at war, till there came in view the mountains that they sought and the sight of the peaks they knew; and they descended into an austral valley, and saw Summer sometimes sleeping and sometimes singing song. "I think the wind is about right," said the hen; and she spread her wings and ran out of the poultry-yard. And she ran fluttering out on to the road and some way down it until she came to a garden. At evening she came back panting.