Time, you old gipsy man, Will you not stay, Put up your caravan Just for one day?
Sour fiend, go home and tell the Pit: For once you met your master, A man who carried in his soul Three charms against disaster, The Devil and disaster.
Away, away, and tell the tale And start your whelps a-whining, Say "In the greenwood of his soul A lizard's eye was shining, A little eye kept shining."
Away, away, and salve your sores, And set your hags a-groaning, Say "In the greenwood of his soul A drowsy bee was droning, A dreamy bee was droning."
Prodigious Bat! Go start the walls Of Hell with horror ringing, Say "In the greenwood of his soul There was a goldfinch singing, A pretty goldfinch singing."
And then come back, come, if you please, A fiercer ghoul and ghaster, With all the glooms and smuts of Hell Behind you, I'm your master! You know I'm still your master.
Nought is there here the eye to strike-- Uncurved canals where barges ply; A hundred hamlets all alike;
Flat fields that cut an arc of sky With men and women o'er them bent Who needs must labour lest they die.
Would any say that lives so spent Might break, spurred on by love and pride, Their bars of animal content?
Nay, here live men unvexed, untried-- I mused. Yet pacing Roosevelt street In idle humour I espied
A village man and woman meet, And pass with never word or sign-- So strange in neighbour-folk whose feet
Haunt the same fields in rain and shine That, curious eyed, in either face, In curve of lip, or graven line,
I sought for hints of pain or trace Of harsh resolve, and so grew ware That hers was as a hiding place
Where lurked the kinship of despair; While his bore record deeply wrought That life for him had but one care,
And that--to mesh re-iterant thought In labour, till at last his soul Should find the anodyne it sought.
Hence now with dreary face he stole Through Roosevelt Street, nor stretched his hand To beg from life its smallest dole.
And yet these two had loved and planned To happiest end, but for the flood That wrecks, upreared on rock or sand,
The house of hopes. Thus--cold of mood, He, loving wholly, could but choose To deem her heart as his subdued;
While she, as maidens oft-times use, Denied sweet proofs of love, was fain To gain them by the world-old ruse;