remnants from Demosthenes and Homer, Until you struck your blackened tents again And tattered pageants crossed the endless plain Of fertile Hungary.

’Tis even said you planned To trick the Pope with penitential moaning, And gained his leave to wander seven years Towards the melancholy North, with tears The sin of feigned apostasy atoning:  Thus fortified against enquiring foes, You, with the budding of the Tudor rose, Alighted on our land.

p. 8Who says it was not good To see your handkerchiefs of red and yellow, And silver rings and basket-laden carts, And hear the honey-lipped prophetic arts Of wheedling witches, or a clean-limbed fellow Who fiddled by the hedgerow in the smoke, And roused the antique Gipsy song that woke The silence of the wood?

p. 8

Now that your blood must fail, What artist soul revengefully remembers You raided the domain of chanticleer, Or deftly poisoned pigs to swell your cheer Of hedgehogs cooked in clay amid the embers? Who says you sometimes wedded art to force, Or made the worse appear the better horse Before a coming sale?

You soon will pass away; Laid one by one below the village steeple You face the East from which your fathers sprang, Or sleep in moorland turf, beyond the clang Of towns and fairs; your tribes have joined the people Whom no true Romany will call by name, The folk departed like the camp-fire flame Of withered yesterday.

p. 9V AUTUMN DYING

p. 9

V

Autumn shakes in golden raiment, Gashed with red; None can ransom him by payment From the dead.

Autumn

They have shorn his strength with reaping, Left him cold; Now he wakes each morning weeping, Weak and old.

And last night he sought my casement, Came and fled; Wailed for aid from roof to basement, Touched my bed.

Though I cannot find his ransom, Ere he dies; I will pay all that I can—some Hopes and sighs.

p. 10VI THE DEPARTURE FOR CYTHERA

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