Page:Poems that every child should know (ed. Burt, 1904).djvu/315

Rh Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,

To laugh as he sits by the river,

Making a poet out of a man:

The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,—

For the reed which grows nevermore again

As a reed with the reeds in the river.

.

The Brides of Enderby.

old mayor climb'd the belfry tower,

The ringers ran by two, by three;

"Pull, if ye never pull'd before;

Good ringers, pull your best," quoth he.

"Play uppe, play uppe, O Boston bells!

Ply all your changes, all your swells,

Play uppe, 'The Brides of Enderby.'"

Men say it was a stolen tyde—

The Lord that sent it, He knows all;

But in myne ears doth still abide

The message that the bells let fall:

And there was naught of strange, beside

The flight of mews and peewits pied

By millions crouch'd on the old sea wall,

I sat and spun within the doore,

My thread brake off, I rais'd myne eyes;

The level sun, like ruddy ore,

Lay sinking in the barren skies: