Page:General William Booth enters into Heaven, and other poems.djvu/107

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WAS but a half-grown boy, You were a girl-child slight. Ah, how weary you were! You had led in the bullock-fight. . . We slew the bullock at length With knives and maces of stone. And so your feet were torn, Your lean arms bruised to the bone.

Perhaps 'twas the slain beast's blood We drank, or a root we ate, Or our reveling evening bath In the fall by the garden gate, But you turned to a witching thing, Side-glancing, and frightened me; You purred like a panther's cub, You sighed like a shell from the sea. We knelt. I caressed your hair By the light of the leaping fire: Your fierce eyes blinked with smoke,