The Five Students

The sparrow dips in his wheel-rut bath,

The sun grows passionate-eyed,

And boils the dew to smoke by the paddock-path;

As strenuously we stride, -

Five of us; dark He, fair He, dark She, fair She, I,

All beating by.

The air is shaken, the high-road hot,

Shadowless swoons the day,

The greens are sobered and cattle at rest; but not

We on our urgent way, -

Four of us; fair She, dark She, fair He, I, are there,

But one - elsewhere.

Autumn moulds the hard fruit mellow,

And forward still we press

Through moors, briar-meshed plantations, clay-pits yellow,

As in the spring hours - yes,

Three of us: fair He, fair She, I, as heretofore,

But - fallen one more.

The leaf drops: earthworms draw it in

At night-time noiselessly,

The fingers of birch and beech are skeleton-thin,

And yet on the beat are we, -

Two of us; fair She, I. But no more left to go

The track we know.

Icicles tag the church-aisle leads,

The flag-rope gibbers hoarse,

The home-bound foot-folk wrap their snow-flaked heads,

Yet I still stalk the course, -

One of us . . . Dark and fair He, dark and fair She, gone:

The rest - anon.

-o0o-