Page:The Dial (Volume 74).djvu/88

The Primum Mobile that fashioned us
Has made the very owls in circles move,
And I, that count myself most prosperous
Seeing that love and friendship are enough,
For an old neighbour's friendship chose the house
And decked and altered it for a girl's love,
And know whatever flourish and decline
These stones remain their monument and mine.

An affable Irregular,
A heavily built Falstaffian man,
Comes cracking jokes of Civil War
As though to die by gunshot were
The finest play under the sun.

A brown Lieutenant and his men,
Half dressed in National uniform,
Stand at my door, and I complain
Of the foul weather, hail and rain,
A pear tree broken by the storm.

I count those feathered balls of soot,
The moor-hen guides upon the stream,
To silence the envy in my thought;
And turn towards my chamber, caught
In the cold snows of a dream.

The bees build in the crevices
Of loosening masonry, and there
The mother birds bring grubs and flies.
My wall is loosening, honey-bees
Come build in the empty house of the stare.