Never the time and the place And the loved one all together! This path--how soft to pace! This May--what magic weather! Where is the loved one's face? 5 In a dream that loved one's face meets mine, But the house is narrow, the place is bleak Where, outside, rain and wind combine With a furtive ear, if I strive to speak, With a hostile eye at my flushing cheek, 10 With a malice that marks each word, each sign! O enemy sly and serpentine, Uncoil thee from the waking man! Do I hold the Past Thus firm and fast 15 Yet doubt if the Future hold I can? This path so soft to pace shall lead Through the magic of May to herself indeed! Or narrow if needs the house must be, Outside are the storms and strangers; we-- 20 Oh, close, safe, warm sleep I and she --I and she! THE PATRIOT It was roses, roses, all the way, With myrtle mixed in my path like mad; The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway, The church-spires flamed, such flags they had, A year ago on this very day. 5 The air broke into a mist with bells, The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries. Had I said, "Good folk, mere noise repels-- But give me your sun from yonder skies!" They had answered, "And afterward, what else?" 10 Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun To give it my loving friends to keep! Naught man could do, have I left undone; And you see my harvest, what I reap This very day, now a year is run. 15 There's nobody on the housetops now-- Just a palsied few at the windows set; For the best of the sight is, all allow, At the Shambles' Gate--or, better yet, By the very scaffold's foot, I trow. 20 I go in the rain, and, more than needs, A rope cuts both my wrists behind; And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds, For they fling, whoever has a mind, Stones at me for my year's misdeeds. 25 Thus I entered, and thus I go! In triumphs, people have dropped down dead. "Paid by the world, what dost thou owe Me?"--God might question; now instead, 'Tis God shall repay; I am safer so. 30 INSTANS TYRANNUS I Of the million or two, more or less, I rule and possess, One man, for some cause undefined, Was least to my mind. II I struck him; he groveled, of course-- 5 For what was his force? I pinned him to earth with my weight And persistence of hate; And he lay, would not moan, would not curse, As his lot might be worse. 10 III