THE OLD LABOURER.

HIS fourscore years have bent a back of oak, His earth-brown cheeks are full of hollow pits; His gnarled hands wander idly as he sits Bending above the hearthstone’s feeble smoke. Threescore and ten slow years he tilled the land; He wrung his bread from out the stubborn soil; He saw his masters flourish through his toil; He held their substance in his horny hand.

Now he is old: he asks for daily bread:  He who has sowed the bread he may not taste Begs for the crumbs: he would do no man wrong. The Parish Guardians, when his case is read, Will grant him (yet with no unseemly haste)  Just seventeen pence to starve on, seven days long.

 

THE ABSINTHE DRINKER.

GENTLY I wave the visible world away. Far off, I hear a roar, afar yet near, Far off and strange, a voice is in my ear, And is the voice my own? the words I say Fall strangely, like a dream, across the day; And the dim sunshine is a dream. How clear, New as the world to lovers’ eyes, appear The men and women passing on their way!

The world is very fair. The hours are all Linked in a dance of mere forgetfulness. I am at peace with God and man. O glide, Sands of the hour-glass that I count not, fall Serenely: scarce I feel your soft caress. Rocked on this dreamy and indifferent tide.

 

JAVANESE DANCERS,

TWITCHED strings, the clang of metal, beaten drums. Dull, shrill, continuous, disquieting; And now the stealthy dancer comes Undulantly with cat-like steps that cling;

Smiling between her painted lids a smile, Motionless, unintelligible, she twines Her fingers into mazy lines, Twining her scarves across them all the while.

One, two, three, four step forth, and, to and fro, Delicately and imperceptibly, Now swaying gently in a row, Now interthreading slow and rhythmically,

Still with fixed eyes, monotonously still, Mysteriously, with smiles inanimate, With lingering feet that undulate, With sinuous fingers, spectral hands that thrill,

The little amber-coloured dancers move, Like little painted figures on a screen, Or phantom-dancers haply seen Among the shadows of a magic grove.

 

 Prev. P 11/26 next