That hour I saw, from depth to height, this wildering universe unite!
The lambs of God around us and His passion in every flower!
The Fool
His grandeur in the dust, His dust a blaze of blinding majesty,
And all His immortality in one poor mortal hour.
And Death was but a change of key in Life the golden melody,
And Time became Eternity, and Heaven a fleeting smile;
For all was each and each was all, and all a wedded unity,
Her heart in mine, and mine in my companion of a mile.
Thwack! Thwack! He whirled his bauble round about,
"This fellow beats them all," he cried, "the worst
Those others wrote was that I hopped from York
To Paris with a mortar on my head.
This fellow sends me leaping through the clouds
To buss the moon! The best is yet to come;
Strike up, Sir John! Ha! ha! You know no more?"
Kemp leapt upon a table. "Clear the way",
He cried, and with a great stamp of his foot
And a wild crackling laugh, drew all to hark,
"With hey and ho, through thick and thin,
The hobby-horse is forgotten,
But I must finish what I begin,
Tho' all the roads be rotten.
"By all those twenty thousand chariots, Ben,
Hear this true tale they shall! Now, let me see,
Where was Will Kemp? Bussing the moon's pale mouth?
Ah, yes!" He crouched above the listening throng,—
"Good as a play," I heard one whispering quean,—
And, waving his bauble, shuffling with his feet
In a dance that marked the time, he sank his voice
As if to breathe great secrets, and so sang:—
III
At Melford town, at Melford town, at little grey-roofed Melford town,
A long mile from Sudbury, upon the village green,
We danced into a merry rout of country-folk that skipt about
A hobby-horse, a May-pole, and a laughing white-pot queen.
They thronged about us as we stayed, and there I gave my sunshine maid
An English crown for cakes and ale—her dancing was so true!
And "Nay," she said, "I danced my mile for love!" I answered with a smile,
"'Tis but a silver token, lass, 'thou'st won that wager, too."
I took my leash of morrice-bells, my treble, bass and tenor bells,
They pealed like distant marriage-bells! And up came William Bee
With Georgie Sprat, my overseer, and Thomas Slye, my tabourer,
"Farewell," she laughed, and vanished with a Suffolk courtesie.
I leapt away to Rockland, and from Rockland on to Hingham,
From Hingham on to Norwich, sirs! I hardly heard a-while
The throngs that followed after, with their shouting and their laughter,
For a shadow danced beside me, my companion of a mile!