And I wove the thing to a random rhyme,
For the Rose is Beauty, the Gardener, Time.
DON QUIXOTE.
Behind thy pasteboard, on thy battered hack,
Thy lean cheek striped with plaster to and fro,
Thy long spear levelled at the unseen foe,
And doubtful Sancho trudging at thy back,
Thou wert a figure strange enough, good lack!
To make Wiseacredom, both high and low,
Rub purblind eyes, and (having watched thee go)
Dispatch its Dogberrys upon thy track:
Alas! poor Knight! Alas! poor soul possest?
Yet would to-day when Courtesy grows chill,
And life's fine loyalties are turned to jest,
Some fire of thine might burn within us still!
Ah, would but one might lay his lance in rest,
And charge in earnest—were it but a mill!
A BROKEN SWORD.
(To A. L.)
The shopman shambled from the doorway out
And twitched it down—
Snapped in the blade! 'Twas scarcely dear, I doubt,
At half-a-crown.
Useless enough! And yet can still be seen,
In letters clear,
Traced on the metal's rusty damaskeen—
"Povr Paruenyr."
Whose was it once?—Who manned it once in hope
His fate to gain?
Who was it dreamed his oyster-world should ope
To this—in vain?
Maybe with some stout Argonaut it sailed
The Western Seas;
Maybe but to some paltry Nym availed
For toasting cheese!
Or decked by Beauty on some morning lawn
With silken knot,
Perchance, ere night, for Church and King 'twas drawn—
Perchance 'twas not!