The Priests are singing in their stalls, Their singing lifts, their incense burns, their praying clamours; Yet God is as the sparrow falls, The ivy drifts; The votive urns Are all left void when Fortune turns, The god is but a marble for the kerns To break with hammers; a tale, a dream. O Beauty, let me know again The green earth cold, the April rain, the quiet waters figuring sky, The one star risen. So shall I pass into the feast Not touched by King, Merchant, or Priest; Know the red spirit of the beast, Be the green grain; Escape from prison. SONNET[18] Is there a great green commonwealth of Thought Which ranks the yearly pageant, and decides How Summer's royal progress shall be wrought, By secret stir which in each plant abides? Does rocking daffodil consent that she, The snowdrop of wet winters, shall be first? Does spotted cowslip with the grass agree To hold her pride before the rattle burst? And in the hedge what quick agreement goes, When hawthorn blossoms redden to decay, That Summer's pride shall come, the Summer's rose, Before the flower be on the bramble spray? Or is it, as with us, unresting strife, And each consent a lucky gasp for life? FOOTNOTES: [17] From _The Story of a Round-House_ by John Masefield. Copyright, 1913, by The Macmillan Company. Reprinted by permission of the publishers. [18] From _Good Friday and Other Poems_ by John Masefield. Copyright, 1916, by The Macmillan Company. Reprinted by permission of the publishers. _Lord Dunsany_ Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Lord Dunsany, was born July 24, 1878, and was educated at Eton and Sandhurst. He is best known as an author of fantastic fairy tales and even more fantastic plays. _The Gods of the Mountain_ (1911) and _The Golden Doom_ (1912) are highly dramatic and intensely poetic. _A Night at an Inn_ (1916) is that peculiar novelty, an eerie and poetical melodrama. Dunsany's prime quality is a romantic and highly colored imagination which is rich in symbolism. After the World War, in which the playwright served as captain in the Royal Innis-killing Fusiliers, Dunsany visited America and revised the reissue of his early tales and prose poems collected in his _The Book of Wonder_. SONGS FROM AN EVIL WOOD I There is no wrath in the stars, They do not rage in the sky; I look from the evil wood And find myself wondering why. Why do they not scream out And grapple star against star, Seeking for blood in the wood As all things round me are? They do not glare like the sky Or flash like the deeps of the wood; But they shine softly on In their sacred solitude. To their high, happy haunts Silence from us has flown, She whom we loved of old And know it now she is gone.