The forest’s erewhile emperor at eve
Had voice when lowered heavens drummed for gales. 
At midnight a small people danced the dales,
So thin that they might dwindle through a sieve

XXV.

Ringed mushrooms told of them, and in their throats,
Old wives that gathered herbs and knew too much. 
The pensioned forester beside his crutch,
Struck showers from embers at those bodeful notes.

XXVI.

Came then the one, all ear, all eye, all heart;
Devourer, and insensibly devoured;
In whom the city over forest flowered,
The forest wreathed the city’s drama-mart.

XXVII.

There found he in new form that Dragon old,
From tangled solitudes expelled; and taught
How blindly each its antidote besought;
For either’s breath the needs of either told.

XXVIII.

Now deep in woods, with song no sermon’s drone,
He showed what charm the human concourse works: 
Amid the press of men, what virtue lurks
Where bubble sacred wells of wildness lone.

XXIX.

Our conquest these:  if haply we retain
The reverence that ne’er will overrun
Due boundaries of realms from Nature won,
Nor let the poet’s awe in rapture wane.

Poem:  A Garden Idyl

With sagest craft Arachne worked
Her web, and at a corner lurked,
Awaiting what should plump her soon,
To case it in the death-cocoon. 
Sagaciously her home she chose
For visits that would never close;
Inside my chalet-porch her feast
Plucked all the winds but chill North-east.

The finished structure, bar on bar,
Had snatched from light to form a star,
And struck on sight, when quick with dews,
Like music of the very Muse. 
Great artists pass our single sense;
We hear in seeing, strung to tense;
Then haply marvel, groan mayhap,
To think such beauty means a trap. 
But Nature’s genius, even man’s
At best, is practical in plans;
Subservient to the needy thought,
However rare the weapon wrought. 
As long as Nature holds it good
To urge her creatures’ quest for food
Will beauty stamp the just intent
Of weapons upon service bent. 
For beauty is a flower of roots
Embedded lower than our boots;
Out of the primal strata springs,
And shows for crown of useful things

Arachne’s dream of prey to size
Aspired; so she could nigh despise
The puny specks the breezes round
Supplied, and let them shake unwound;
Assured of her fat fly to come;
Perhaps a blue, the spider’s plum;
Who takes the fatal odds in fight,
And gives repast an appetite,
By plunging, whizzing, till his wings
Are webbed, and in the lists he swings,
A shrouded lump, for her to see
Her banquet in her victory.