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.'

Many Inventions

And if ye doubt the tale I tell,
Steer through the South Pacific swell;
Go where the branching coral hives
Unending strife of endless lives,

Where, leagued about the 'wildered boat,
The rainbow jellies fill and float;

And, lilting where the laver lingers,
The starfish trips on all her fingers;
Where, 'neath his myriad spines ashock,
The sea-egg ripples down the rock,
An orange wonder dimly guessed,
From darkness where the cuttles rest,
Moored o'er the darker deeps that hide
The blind white Sea-snake and his bride
Who, drowsing, nose the long-lost ships
Let down through darkness to their lips.
'A Matter of Fact.'

CHAPTER HEADINGS

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

at once,

For the bullocks are walkin' two by two,

The byles are walkin' two by two,

The bullocks are walkin' 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.'

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, father's, own, sin bound alway);
Peer up, draw out thy horoscope and say
Which planet mends thy threadbare fate, or mars.

IF

F you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream-and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim, If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And-which is more-you'll be a Man, my son!