>From some old thief and son of Lucifer, 890
His forehead chapleted green with wreathy hop,
Sunburned all over like an AEthiop. 
And when my Cotnar begins to operate
And the tongue of the rogue to run at a proper rate,
And our wine-skin, tight once, shows each flaccid dent,
I shall drop in with—­as if by accident—­
“You never knew, then, how it all ended,
What fortune good or bad attended
The little lady your Queen befriended?”
—­And when that’s told me, what’s remaining? 900
This world’s too hard for my explaining. 
The same wise judge of matters equine
        Who still preferred some slim four-year-old
        To the big-boned stock of mighty Berold
And, for strong Cotnar, drank French weak wine,
He also must be such a lady’s scorner! 
        Smooth Jacob still robs homely Esau: 
        Now up, now down, the world’s one see-saw. 
—­So, I shall find out some snug corner
Under a hedge, like Orson the wood-knight, 910
Turn myself round and bid the world good night;
And sleep a sound sleep till the trumpet blowing
        Wakes me (unless priests cheat us laymen)
To a world where will be no further throwing
        Pearls before swine that can’t value them.  Amen!

Notes:  “The Flight of the Duchess.”  A story of the triumph of a free and loving life over a cold and conventional one.  The duke’s huntsman frees his mind to his friend as to his part in the escape of the gladsome, ardent young duchess from the blighting yoke of a husband whose life consisted in imitating defunct mediaeval customs.  An old gipsy is the agency that awakens her to the joy and freedom of love.  Her mystic chant and charm claim the duchess as the true heir of gipsy blood, thrill her with life, half-hypnotize the huntsman, too, and seem to transform the gipsy crone herself into an Eastern queen.  He helps them off, and looks for no better future, when the duke’s death releases him, than to travel to the land of the gipsies and hear the last news of his lady.

The poem grew from the fancies aroused in the poet’s heart by the snatch of a woman’s song he overheard when a boy—­“Following the Queen of the Gipsies, O!”

A Grammarian’s funeral,
shortly after the revival of
learning in Europe

Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
                Singing together. 
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes
                Each in its tether
Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain,
                Cared-for till cock-crow: 
Look out if yonder be not day again
                Rimming the rock-row! 
That’s the appropriate country; there, man’s thought,
                Rarer, intenser, 10
Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought,