The snake's wit evadeth not,
The charmed lip persuadeth not;
So thoroughly it despiseth
The thing thy hand prizeth,
Though the sun were thy clothing,

It should count thee for nothing. Thine own eye divineth thee, Thine own soul arraigneth thee; God himself cannot shrive thee Till that judge forgive thee.

THE FLUTE

PUFFED up with luring to her knees
The rabbits from the blackberries,
Quaint little satyrs, and shy and mute,
That limped reluctant to the flute,
She needs must seek the forest's womb
And pipe up tigers from green gloom.

Grouped round the dreaming oaten quill
Those sumptuous savages were still,
Rich spectral beasts that feared to stir,
And haughty and wistful gazed on her,
And swayed their sleepy masks in time
And growled a drowsy under-rhyme.

Tune done, that agile fancy stopped,
The lingering notes in mid-air dropped;
The flute stole from her parted kiss,
Her cheeks for sorcery burned with bliss.
Then grew a deadly muttering there;
And sudden yellow eyes aglare
Blazed furious over wrinkled lips
And teeth on her. Her finger-tips
Trembled a little as they woke
The second tune beneath the oak,

A lilt that charmed and lulled to mute
The uneasy soul within the brute.

And all that warbling ecstasy
Was winged with terror, and daintily
Ceased on the wild and tragic face
And desperate huddle of her grace:
For with the hush began to gride
Their sullen, soulless, evil-eyed,
Intolerable rage, blown hot

Upon her. The third tune was caught

A SONG WITH A DISCORD THOUGH Winter come with dripping

skies, And laden winds and strong,

Yet I'll read summer in her eyes Whose voice is summer's song.

Who grieves because the world is old, Or cares how long it last,

LIGHTER than dandelion down,

Or feathers from the white moth's wing, Out of the gates of bramble-town The silkweed goes a-gypsying.

Too fair to fly in autumn's rout,

All winter in the sheath it lay;
But now, when spring is pushing out,
The zephyr calls, "Away! away!"

Through mullein, bramble, brake, and fern,

Up from their cradle-spring they fly,
Beyond the boundary wall to turn
And voyage through the friendly sky.

Softly, as if instinct with thought,

They float and drift, delay and turn; And one avoids and one is caught Between an oak-leaf and a fern.

And one holds by an airy line

The spider drew from tree to tree; And if the web is light and fine, 'Tis not so light and fine as he !

SOLITUDE

As one advances up the slow ascent
Along the pathway in the woods, the trees
Change aspect, nor alone in this, but
change

In stature and in power till Solitude
Seems cut out of the ancient forest. Here
Was Solitude! where man had lived of
old,

Loved, serving God, and built himself a home.

Man smooths an acre on the rolling earth, Turns up the mould and reaps the gifts of God;

Plucks down the apple from the tree, the tree

From empire in the forest, builds a home;
Turns for a bout among his brothers, wins
A sister to his wife and gets an heir;
And then as here in Solitude departs
And leaves small mark behind. The place
is rare

In this high epic of the human life.
Where wildness has been wilderness shall

be,