When he stands up as pleading, in wavering, man-brute guise,

When he veils the hate and cunning of the little, swinish eyes;

"When he shows as seeking quarter, with paws like hands in prayer,

That is the time of peril-the time of the Truce of the Bear!"

Eyeless, noseless, and lipless, asking a dole at the door,

Matun, the old blind beggar, he tells it o'er and

o'er;

Fumbling and feeling the rifles, warming his hands at the flame,

Hearing our careless white men talk of the morrow's game;

Over and over the story, ending as he began:"There is no truce with Adam-zad, the Bear that looks like a man!"

THE OLD MEN

This is our lot if we live so long and labour unto the end

That we outlive the impatient years and the much too patient friend :

And because we know we have breath in our mouth

and think we have thought in our head,

We shall assume that we are alive, whereas we are really dead.

We shall not acknowledge that old stars fade or alien planets arise

(That the sere bush buds or the desert blooms or the ancient well-head dries),

Or any new compass wherewith new men

adventure 'neath new skies.

We shall lift up the ropes that constrained our youth to bind on our children's hands;

We shall call to the water below the bridges to

return and replenish our lands;

We shall harness horses (Death's own pale

horses) and scholarly plough the sands.

We shall lie down in the eye of the sun for lack of a light on our way—

We shall rise up when the day is done and chirrup, "Behold, it is day!"

We shall abide till the battle is won ere we amble into the fray.

We shall peck out and discuss and dissect, and evert and extrude to our mind,

The flaccid tissues of long-dead issues offensive to God and mankind

(Precisely like vultures over an ox that the Army has left behind).

We shall make walk preposterous ghosts of the glories we once created

(Immodestly smearing from muddled palettes amazing pigments mismated)

And our friends will weep when we ask them with boasts if our natural force be abated.

The Lamp of our Youth will be utterly out: but we shall subsist on the smell of it, And whatever we do, we shall fold our hands

and suck our gums and think well of it. Yes, we shall be perfectly pleased with our work, and that is the perfectest Hell of it!

This is our lot if we live so long and listen to those who love us

That we are shunned by the people about and shamed by the Powers above us.

Wherefore be free of your harness betimes; but being free be assured,

That he who hath not endured to the death, from his birth he hath never endured!

THE EXPLORER

"THERE'S no sense in going further-it's the edge of cultivation,"

So they said, and I believed it-broke my land and sowed my crop

Built my barns and strung my fences in the little border station

Tucked away below the foothills where the trails run out and stop.

Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable changes

On one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated-so:

"Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges

"Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!"