Shouts in their silky ears
Filling their soul with fears.
When he has ploughed the land,
He says: "They understand."
But the beasts in stall together,
Freed from the yoke and tether,
Say as the torn flanks smoke:
"Nay, 'twas the whip that spoke."

THE

LIFE'S HANDICAP

HE doors were wide, the story saith,
Out of the night came the patient wraith.
He might not speak, and he could not stir
A hair of the Baron's minniver.

Speechless and strengthless, a shadow thin,
He roved the castle to find his kin.
And oh! 'twas a piteous sight to see
The dumb ghost follow his enemy!

The Return of Imray.

Before my Spring I garnered Autumn's gain,
Out of her time my field was white with grain,
The year gave up her secrets, to my woe.
Forced and deflowered each sick season lay
In mystery of increase and decay;

I saw the sunset ere men see the day,
Who am too wise in all I should not know.
Without Benefit of Clergy.

KIM

UNTO whose use the pregnant suns are poised,

With idiot moons and stars retracting stars? Creep thou between-thy coming's all unnoised. Heaven hath her high, as Earth her baser, wars. Heir to these tumults, this affright, that fray (By Adam's, fathers', own, sin bound alway); Peer up, draw out thy horoscope and say Which planet mends thy threadbare fate, or mars.'

MANY INVENTIONS

THERE'S a convict more in the Central Jail,

Behind the old mud wall;

There's a lifter less on the Border trail,

And the Queen's Peace over all,

Dear boys,

The Queen's Peace over all!

For we must bear our leader's blame,

On us the shame will fall,

If we lift our hand from a fettered land

And the Queen's Peace over all,

Dear boys,

The Queen's Peace over all!

The Lost Legion.

'Less you want your toes trod off you'd better get back at

once,

For the bullocks are walking two by two,

The byles are walking two by two,

And the elephants bring the guns.
Ho! Yuss!

Great-big-long-black-forty-pounder guns.
Jiggery-jolty to and fro,

Each as big as a launch in tow

Blind-dumb-broad-breeched-beggars o' battering-guns.

My Lord the Elephant.

All the world over, nursing their scars,
Sit the old fighting-men broke in the wars-
Sit the old fighting men, surly and grim
Mocking the lilt of the conquerors' hymn.

Dust of the battle o'erwhelmed them and hid,
Fame never found them for aught that they did.
Wounded and spent to the lazar they drew,
Lining the road where the Legions roll through.

Sons of the Laurel who press to your meed,
(Worthy God's pity most-ye who succeed!)
Ere you go triumphing, crowned, to the stars,
Pity poor fighting men, broke in the wars!
Collected.

PUT forth to watch, unschooled, alone,
"Twixt hostile earth and sky;

The mottled lizard 'neath the stone
Is wiser here than I.

What stir across the haze of heat?

What omen down the wind?
The buck that break before my feet-
They know, but I am blind!

Collected.

1914-18

FAREWELL and adieu to you, Harwich Ladies,
Farewell and adieu to you, ladies ashore!

For we've received orders to work to the eastward
Where we hope in a short time to strafe 'em some more.

We'll duck and we'll dive like little tin turtles,
We'll duck and we'll dive underneath the North Seas,
Until we strike something that doesn't expect us,
From here to Cuxhaven it's go as you please!

The first thing we did was to dock in a minefield,
Which isn't a place where repairs should be done;
And there we lay doggo in twelve-fathom water
With tri-nitro-toluol hogging our run.

The next thing we did, we rose under a Zeppelin,
With his shiny big belly half blocking the sky.

But what in the Heavens can you do with six-pounders?
So we fired what we had and we bade him good-bye.

Farewell and adieu, &c.

Fringes of the Fleet.

SONG OF THE FIFTH RIVER

WHEN first by Eden Tree,

The Four Great Rivers ran,

To each was appointed a Man
Her Prince and Ruler to be.

But after this was ordained,
(The ancient legends tell),
There came dark Israel,
For whom no River remained.

Then He Whom the Rivers obey
Said to him: "Fling on the ground
A handful of yellow clay,

And a Fifth Great River shall run,
Mightier than these Four,

In secret the Earth around;

And Her secret evermore,

Shall be shown to thee and thy Race."

And Israel laid down

His sceptre and his crown,

To brood on that River bank,
Where the waters flashed and sank,