And now I dare not follow after Too close. I try to keep in sight, Dreading his frown and worse his laughter. I steal out of the wood to light; I see the swift shoot from the rafter By the inn door: ere I alight I wait and hear the starlings wheeze And nibble like ducks: I wait his flight. He goes: I follow: no release Until he ceases. Then I also shall cease. HOUSE AND MAN ONE hour: as dim he and his house now look As a reflection in a rippling brook, While I remember him; but first, his house. Empty it sounded. It was dark with forest boughs That brushed the walls and made the mossy tiles Part of the squirrels' track. In all those miles Of forest silence and forest murmur, only One house--"Lonely!" he said, "I wish it were lonely"-- Which the trees looked upon from every side, And that was his. He waved good-bye to hide A sigh that he converted to a laugh. He seemed to hang rather than stand there, half Ghost-like, half like a beggar's rag, clean wrung And useless on the brier where it has hung Long years a-washing by sun and wind and rain. But why I call back man and house again Is that now on a beech-tree's tip I see As then I saw--I at the gate, and he In the house darkness,--a magpie veering about, A magpie like a weathercock in doubt. THE GYPSY A FORTNIGHT before Christmas Gypsies were every- where: Vans were drawn up on wastes, women trailed to the fair. "My gentleman," said one, "You've got a lucky face." "And you've a luckier," I thought, "if such a grace And impudence in rags are lucky." "Give a penny For the poor baby's sake." "Indeed I have not any Unless you can give change for a sovereign, my dear." "Then just half a pipeful of tobacco can you spare?" I gave it. With that much victory she laughed content. I should have given more, but off and away she went With her baby and her pink sham flowers to rejoin The rest before I could translate to its proper coin Gratitude for her grace. And I paid nothing then, As I pay nothing now with the dipping of my pen For her brother's music when he drummed the tambourine And stamped his feet, which made the workmen passing grin, While his mouth-organ changed to a rascally Bacchanal dance "Over the hills and far away." This and his glance Outlasted all the fair, farmer and auctioneer, Cheap-jack, balloon-man, drover with crooked stick, and steer, Pig, turkey, goose, and duck, Christmas Corpses to be. Not even the kneeling ox had eyes like the Romany. That night he peopled for me the hollow wooded land, More dark and wild than stormiest heavens, that I searched and scanned Like a ghost new-arrived. The gradations of the dark Were like an underworld of death, but for the spark In the Gypsy boy's black eyes as he played and stamped his tune, "Over the hills and far away," and a crescent moon. MAN AND DOG