Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/474

VARIOUS POEMS Or to hear the shrieks and roars,—all three

One red, the feasters and the feast!

Guns, pistols, blazed, till the lion sprawled,

Shot dead, but Hebe held to her prey

And drank his blood, while keepers bawled

And their hot irons made yon scars that day.

But the woman? True, I had forgot:

She never flinched at the havoc made,

Nor gave one cry, but there on the spot

Drove to the heart her poniard-blade,

Straight, like a man, and fell, nor stirred

Again;—so that fine pair were dead;

One lied, and the other kept her word,—

And death pays debts, when all is said.

So they hustled Hebe out of France,

To Spain, or may be to England first,

Then hitherward over seas, by chance,

She came as you see her, always athirst,—

As if, like the tigresses that slink

In the village canes of Hindostan,

Of one rare draught she loves to think,

And ever to get it must plan and plan.

SOUVENIR DE JEUNESSE

Sibyl kept her tryst with me, the harvest moon was rounded

In evening hush through pathways lush with fern we reached the glade;

The rippling river soft and low with fairy plashes sounded,

The silver poplar rustled as we sat within its shade.

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