Are we but truants from a parent stern—
Whose strait commands with fear we long obeyed,
Till, gladdened by the sunlight, far we strayed,
And lingered by the woodside and the byrne,
The bird's sweet passion at the sun's return,
The flower's grieving at his sight delayed,
With wistful, long-pent love, to watch and learn,
Till evening come, and we turn home dismayed?
Or have we grown unto our fuller seeing,
The manhood of our days, when evermore
Our Father speaks and, punishment decreeing,
Is high and silent from his sapphire door?
Forever past, the childhood of our being:
He stoops to reason who but spake before.
Literary Monthly, 1908.
THE GOBLIN KING
A BALLAD
BERNARD WESTERMANN '08
Beside the grim, the grey, cold sea
I heard a goblin call to me;
Beneath a rock, beside the water,
He cried, "Go pray thy lady daughter
To bring some wine to me.
"For coldly runs the salt, salt tide,
And I am prisoned fast and long,
And I was wont to feast and song,
And roaming through the woodland wide.
"For coldly runs the salt, salt tide,
And I am wont to have my will,
And he that brooks it fareth ill,
When I may roam the woodland wide.
"Of old, of old I roamed the wood,
Of old I dwelt in lordly state,
Before they came, the black-heart brood,
To make me thus disconsolate.