But when she had passed into the heath, And gained the wood beyond the flat, She raised her skirts, and from beneath Unpinned and drew as from a sheath An ostrich-feathered hat.
And where the hat had hung she now Concealed and pinned the dowdy hood, And set the hat upon her brow, And thus emerging from the wood Tripped on in jaunty mood.
The sun was low and crimson-faced As two came that way from the town, And plunged into the wood untraced . . . When separately therefrom they paced The sun had quite gone down.
The hat and feather disappeared, The dowdy hood again was donned, And in the gloom the fair one neared Her home and husband dour, who conned Calmly his blue-eyed blonde.
“To-day,” he said, “you have shown good sense, A dress so modest and so meek Should always deck your goings hence Alone.” And as a recompense He kissed her on the cheek.
BY Rome’s dim relics there walks a man, Eyes bent; and he carries a basket and spade; I guess what impels him to scrape and scan; Yea, his dreams of that Empire long decayed.
“Vast was Rome,” he must muse, “in the world’s regard, Vast it looms there still, vast it ever will be;” And he stoops as to dig and unmine some shard Left by those who are held in such memory.
But no; in his basket, see, he has brought A little white furred thing, stiff of limb, Whose life never won from the world a thought; It is this, and not Rome, that is moving him.
And to make it a grave he has come to the spot, And he delves in the ancient dead’s long home; Their fames, their achievements, the man knows not; The furred thing is all to him—nothing Rome!
“Here say you that Cæsar’s warriors lie?— But my little white cat was my only friend! Could she but live, might the record die Of Cæsar, his legions, his aims, his end!”
Well, Rome’s long rule here is oft and again A theme for the sages of history, And the small furred life was worth no one’s pen; Yet its mourner’s mood has a charm for me.
“SEE, here’s the workbox, little wife, That I made of polished oak.” He was a joiner, of village life; She came of borough folk.
He holds the present up to her As with a smile she nears And answers to the profferer, “’Twill last all my sewing years!”
“I warrant it will. And longer too. ’Tis a scantling that I got Off poor John Wayward’s coffin, who Died of they knew not what.