Who says it was not good
To see your handkerchiefs of red and yellow,
And silver rings and basket-laden carts,
And hear the honey-lipped prophetic arts
Of wheedling witches, or a clean-limbed fellow
Who fiddled by the hedgerow in the smoke,
And roused the antique Gipsy song that woke
The silence of the wood?
Now that your blood must fail,
What artist soul revengefully remembers
You raided the domain of chanticleer,
Or deftly poisoned pigs to swell your cheer
Of hedgehogs cooked in clay amid the embers?
Who says you sometimes wedded art to force,
Or made the worse appear the better horse
Before a coming sale?
You soon will pass away;
Laid one by one below the village steeple
You face the East from which your fathers sprang,
Or sleep in moorland turf, beyond the clang
Of towns and fairs; your tribes have joined the people
Whom no true Romany will call by name,
The folk departed like the camp-fire flame
Of withered yesterday.
V
AUTUMN DYING
Autumn shakes in golden raiment,
Gashed with red;
None can ransom him by payment
From the dead.
They have shorn his strength with reaping,
Left him cold;
Now he wakes each morning weeping,
Weak and old.
And last night he sought my casement,
Came and fled;
Wailed for aid from roof to basement,
Touched my bed.
Though I cannot find his ransom,
Ere he dies;
I will pay all that I can—some
Hopes and sighs.
VI
THE DEPARTURE FOR CYTHERA
Ere they parted for Cythera
When the spring had reached its bloom,
Phyllis, Doris and Neaera
Peeped into their pictured room,
Wished to go, yet wished to linger,
Lifted each a taper finger,
Threw a kiss towards their portraits set in walls of rose brocade.