They have frocks of white and blue, Yellow sashes they have too, And red ribbons show each head Tenderly is ringleted; And the bell rings loud, and the Railway whistles urgently. After Chapel they will go, Walking delicately slow, Telling still how Father John Is so good to look upon, And such other grave affairs As they thought of during prayers. THE TURN OF THE ROAD I was playing with my hoop along the road Just where the bushes are, when, suddenly, There came a shout,--I ran away and stowed Myself beneath a bush, and watched to see What made the noise, and then, around the bend, I saw a woman running. She was old And wrinkle-faced, and had big teeth.--The end Of her red shawl caught on a bush and rolled Right off her, and her hair fell down.--Her face Was awful white, and both her eyes looked sick, And she was talking queer. 'O God of Grace!' Said she, 'where is the child?' and flew back quick The way she came, and screamed, and shook her hands; ... Maybe she was a witch from foreign lands. A VISIT FROM ABROAD A speck went blowing up against the sky As little as a leaf: then it drew near And broadened.--'It's a bird,' said I, And fetched my bow and arrows. It was queer! It grew from up a speck into a blot, And squattered past a cloud; then it flew down All crumply, and waggled such a lot I thought the thing would fall.--It was a brown Old carpet where a man was sitting snug Who, when he reached the ground, began to sew A big hole in the middle of the rug, And kept on peeping everywhere to know Who might be coming--then he gave a twist And flew away.... I fired at him but missed. * * * * * J.C. SQUIRE A HOUSE Now very quietly, and rather mournfully, In clouds of hyacinth the sun retires, And all the stubble-fields that were so warm to him Keep but in memory their borrowed fires. And I, the traveller, break, still unsatisfied, From that faint exquisite celestial strand, And turn and see again the only dwelling-place In this wide wilderness of darkening land. The house, that house, O now what change has come to it. Its crude red-brick facade, its roof of slate; What imperceptible swift hand has given it A new, a wonderful, a queenly state? No hand has altered it, that parallelogram, So inharmonious, so ill-arranged; That hard blue roof in shape and colour's what it was; No, it is not that any line has changed. Only that loneliness is now accentuate And, as the dusk unveils the heaven's deep cave, This small world's feebleness fills me with awe again, And all man's energies seem very brave. And this mean edifice, which some dull architect Built for an ignorant earth-turning hind, Takes on the quality of that magnificent Unshakable dauntlessness of human kind.