THE dark was thick. A boy he seemed at that time Who trotted by me with uncertain air; “I’ll tell my tale,” he murmured, “for I fancy A friend goes there? . . . ” Then thus he told. “I reached—’twas for the first time— A dwelling. Life was clogged in me with care; I thought not I should meet an eyesome maiden, But found one there. “I entered on the precincts for the second time— ’Twas an adventure fit and fresh and fair— I slackened in my footsteps at the porchway, And found her there. “I rose and travelled thither for the third time, The hope-hues growing gayer and yet gayer As I hastened round the boscage of the outskirts, And found her there. “I journeyed to the place again the fourth time (The best and rarest visit of the rare, As it seemed to me, engrossed about these goings), And found her there. “When I bent me to my pilgrimage the fifth time (Soft-thinking as I journeyed I would dare A certain word at token of good auspice), I found her there. “That landscape did I traverse for the sixth time, And dreamed on what we purposed to prepare; I reached a tryst before my journey’s end came, And found her there. “I went again—long after—aye, the seventh time; The look of things was sinister and bare As I caught no customed signal, heard no voice call, Nor found her there. “And now I gad the globe—day, night, and any time, To light upon her hiding unaware, And, maybe, I shall nigh me to some nymph-niche, And find her there!” “But how,” said I, “has your so little lifetime Given roomage for such loving, loss, despair? A boy so young!” Forthwith I turned my lantern Upon him there. His head was white. His small form, fine aforetime, Was shrunken with old age and battering wear, An eighty-years long plodder saw I pacing Beside me there. THE SUN’S LAST LOOK ON THE COUNTRY GIRL (M. H.) THE sun threw down a radiant spot On the face in the winding-sheet— The face it had lit when a babe’s in its cot; And the sun knew not, and the face knew not That soon they would no more meet. Now that the grave has shut its door, And lets not in one ray, Do they wonder that they meet no more— That face and its beaming visitor— That met so many a day? _December_ 1915. IN A LONDON FLAT I “YOU look like a widower,” she said Through the folding-doors with a laugh from the bed, As he sat by the fire in the outer room, Reading late on a night of gloom, And a cab-hack’s wheeze, and the clap of its feet In its breathless pace on the smooth wet street, Were all that came to them now and then . . . “You really do!” she quizzed again. II