Page:The Farmer's Bride (New Edition).djvu/33

 HE town is old and very steep, A place of bells and cloisters and grey towers, And black clad people walking in their sleep— A nun, a priest, a woman taking flowers To her new grave; and watched from end to end By the great Church above, through the still hours: But in the morning and the early dark The children wake to dart from doors and call Down the wide, crooked street, where, at the bend, Before it climbs up to the park, Ken's is the gabled house facing the Castle wall.

When first I came upon him there Suddenly, on the half-lit stair, I think I hardly found a trace Of likeness to a human face In his. And I said then If in His image God made men. Some other must have made poor Ken— But for his eyes which looked at you As two red, wounded stars might do.

He scarcely spoke, you scarcely heard, His voice broke off in little jars To tears sometimes. An uncouth bird He seemed as he ploughed up the street, Groping, with knarred, high-lifted feet And arms thrust out as if to beat Always against a threat of bars.

And oftener than not there'd be A child just higher than his knee Trotting beside him. Through his dim