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True Thomas sighed above his harp,

And turned the song on the midmost string; And the last least word True Thomas made, He harpit his dead youth back to the King.

"Now I am prince, and I do well

"To love my love withouten fear; "To walk wi' man in fellowship,

"And breathe my horse behind the deer.

"My hounds they bay unto the death, "The buck has couched beyond the burn, "My love she waits at her window "To wash my hands when I return.

"For that I live am I content

"(Oh! I have seen my true love's eyes)
"To stand wi' Adam in Eden-glade,
"And run in the woods o' Paradise!"

'T was naked sky and nodding grass,
'T was running flood and wastrel wind,
Where, checked against the open pass,

The red deer turned to wait the hind.

True Thomas laid his harp away,

And louted low at the saddle-side;
He has taken stirrup and hauden rein,
And set the King on his horse o' pride.

"Sleep ye or wake," True Thomas said,
"That sit so still, that muse so long;
"Sleep ye or wake?- till the Latter Sleep
"I trow ye 'll not forget my song.

"I ha' harpit a shadow out o' the sun

"To stand before your face and cry;
"I ha' armed the earth beneath your heel,
"And over your head I ha' dusked the sky.

"I ha' harpit ye up to the throne o' God,

"I ha' harpit your midmost soul in three; "I ha' harpit ye down to the Hinges o' Hell, ye - would

"And

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a Knight o' me!"

THE PALACE

1902

WHEN I was a King and a Mason—a Master proven and

skilled

I cleared me ground for a Palace such as a King should build.
I decreed and dug down to my levels. Presently, under the silt,
I came on the wreck of a Palace such as a King had built.

There was no worth in the fashion there was no wit in the plan

Hither and thither, aimless, the ruined footings ran

Masonry, brute, mishandled, but carven on every stone:

66

After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known."

Swift to my use in my trenches, where my well-planned groundworks grew,

I tumbled his quoins and his ashlars, and cut and reset them

anew.

Lime I milled of his marbles; burned it, slacked it, and spread: Taking and leaving at pleasure the gifts of the humble dead.

Yet I despised not nor gloried; yet, as we wrenched them apart, I read in the razed foundations the heart of that builder's heart. As he had risen and pleaded, so did I understand

The form of the dream he had followed in the face of the thing he had planned.

When I was a King and a Mason in the open noon of my pride,

They sent me a Word from the Darkness - They whispered and called me aside.

They said "The end is forbidden." They said—"

is fulfilled.

"Thy use "Thy Palace shall stand as that other's the spoil of a King who shall build."

I called my men from my trenches, my quarries, my wharves, and my sheers.

All I had wrought I abandoned to the faith of the faithless years. Only I cut on the timber-only I carved on the stone:

After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known!

BARRACK ROOM BALLADS

I

INDIAN SERVICE

1889-1891

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