here lets love Play beggar to her prudery, and starve, Feeding him ever on looks turned aside. To be so young, so fair, and wise withal! Lets love starve? Nay, I think starves merely me. For when was ever woman logical Both day and night-time? Not since Adam fell! I doubt a lover somewhere. What shrewd bee Hath buzzed betimes about this clover-top? Belike some scrivener's clerk at Bideford, With long goose-quill and inkhorn at his thigh—      Methinks I see the parchment face of him; Or one of those swashbuckler Devon lads That haunt the inn there, with red Spanish gold, Rank scurvy knaves, ripe fruit for gallows-tree;      Or else the sexton's son”—here Wyndham laughed, Though not a man of mirth—indeed, a man Of niggard humor; but that sexton's son—      Lean as the shadow cast by a church spire, Eyes deep in the sockets, noseless, high cheek-boned, Like nothing in the circle of this earth But a death's-head that from a mural slab Within the chancel leers through sermon-time, Making a mock of poor mortality. The fancy touched him, and he laughed a laugh That from his noonday slumber roused an owl Snug in his oaken hermitage hard by. A very rare conceit—the sexton's son! Not he, forsooth; he smacked of churchyard mould And musty odors of moth-eaten palls—      A living death, a walking epitaph! No lover that for tingling flesh and blood To rest soft cheek on and change kisses with. Yet lover somewhere; from his sly cocoon Time would unshell him. In the interim What was to do but wait, and mark who strolled Of evenings up the hill-path and made halt This side the coppice at a certain gate? For by that chance which ever serves ill ends, Within the slanted shadow of The Towers The maid Griselda dwelt. Her gray scarred sire Had for cloth doublet changed the steel cuirass, The sword for gardener's fork, and so henceforth In the mild autumn and sundown of life,      Moving erect among his curves and squares Of lily, rose, and purple flower-de-luce, Set none but harmless squadrons in the field—      Save now and then at tavern, where he posed, Tankard in hand and prattling of old days, A white-mustached epitome of wars. How runs the proverb touching him who waits? Who waits shall have the world. Time's heir is he, Be he but patient. Thus the thing befell Wherefrom grew all this history of woe:      Haunting the grounds one night, as his use was Who loved the dark as bats and owlets do, Wyndham got sound of voices in the air That did such strange and goblin changes ring As left him doubtful 

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