"So trusting Your Honour will somewhat retain "True love and affection for Govt. Bullock Train,

As the rabbit is drawn to the rattlesnake's power,
As the smoker's eye fills at the opium hour,

As a horse reaches up to the manger above,
As the waiting ear yearns for the whisper of love,

From the arms of the Bride, iron-visaged and slow,
The Captain bent down to the Head of the Boh.

And e'en as he looked on the Thing where It lay
"Twixt the winking new spoons and the napkins' array,

The freed mind fled back to the long-ago days -
The hand-to-hand scuffle the smoke and the blaze

The forced march at night and the quick rush at dawn— The banjo at twilight, the burial ere morn

The stench of the marshes the raw, piercing smell When the overhand stabbing-cut silenced the yell

The oaths of his Irish that surged when they stood Where the black crosses hung o'er the Kuttamow flood.

As a derelict ship drifts away with the tide

The Captain went out on the Past from his Bride,

Back, back, through the springs to the chill of the year, When he hunted the Boh from Maloon to Tsaleer.

As the shape of a corpse dimmers up through deep water, In his eye lit the passionless passion of slaughter,

And men who had fought with O'Neil for the life
Had gazed on his face with less dread than his wife.

For she who had held him so long could not hold him Though a four-month Eternity should have controlled him

But watched the twin Terror the head turned to head The scowling, scarred Black, and the flushed savage Red

The spirit that changed from her knowing and flew to
Some grim hidden Past she had never a clue to.

But It knew as It grinned, for he touched it unfearing,
And muttered aloud, "So you kept that jade earring!"

Then nodded, and kindly, as friend nods to friend,
"Old man, you fought well, but you lost in the end."

The visions departed, and Shame followed Passion:66 He took what I said in this horrible fashion?

"I'll write to Harendra!" With language unsainted The Captain came back to the Bride . . . who had fainted.

And this is a fiction? No. Go to Simoorie
And look at their baby, a twelve-month old Houri,

A pert little, Irish-eyed Kathleen Mavournin—
She's always about on the Mall of a mornin' —

And you 'll see, if her right shoulder-strap is displaced,
This: Gules upon argent, a Boh's Head, erased!

THE SACRIFICE OF ER-HEB

ER-HEB

1887

R-HEB beyond the Hills of Ao-Safai
Bears witness to the truth, and Ao-Safai

Hath told the men of Gorukh. Thence the tale
Comes westward o'er the peaks to India.

The story of Bisesa, Armod's child,-
A maiden plighted to the Chief in War,
The Man of Sixty Spears, who held the Pass
That leads to Thibet, but to-day is gone
To seek his comfort of the God called Budh
The Silent showing how the Sickness ceased
Because of her who died to save the tribe.

Taman is One and greater than us all,
Taman is One and greater than all Gods:
Taman is Two in One and rides the sky,

Curved like a stallion's croup, from dusk to dawn,
And drums upon it with his heels, whereby
Is bred the neighing thunder in the hills.

This is Taman, the God of all Er-Heb,

Who was before all Gods, and made all Gods,
And presently will break the Gods he made,

And step upon the Earth to govern men

Who give him milk-dry ewes and cheat his Priests,
Or leave his shrine unlighted as Er-Heb
Left it unlighted and forgot Taman,
When all the Valley followed after Kysh
And Yabosh, little Gods but very wise,
And from the sky Taman beheld their sin.

He sent the Sickness out upon the hills
The Red Horse Sickness with the iron hooves,
To turn the Valley to Taman again.

And the Red Horse snuffed thrice into the wind,
The naked wind that had no fear of him;
And the Red Horse stamped thrice upon the snow,
The naked snow that had no fear of him;
And the Red Horse went out across the rocks,
The ringing rocks that had no fear of him;
And downward, where the lean birch meets the snow,
And downward, where the grey pine meets the birch,
And downward, where the dwarf oak meets the pine,
Till at his feet our cup-like pastures lay.

That night, the slow mists of the evening dropped,
Dropped as a cloth upon a dead man's face,
And weltered in the valley, bluish-white
Like water very silent spread abroad,
Like water very silent, from the Shrine

Unlighted of Taman to where the stream

Is dammed to fill our cattle-troughs sent up
White waves that rocked and heaved and then were still,
Till all the Valley glittered like a marsh,

Beneath the moonlight, filled with sluggish mist
Knee-deep, so that men waded as they walked.

That night, the Red Horse grazed above the Dam,
Beyond the cattle-troughs. Men heard him feed,
And those that heard him sickened where they lay.

Thus came the sickness to Er-Heb, and slew
Ten men, strong men, and of the women four;
And the Red Horse went hillward with the dawn,
But near the cattle-troughs his hoof-prints lay.

That night, the slow mists of the evening dropped,
Dropped as a cloth upon the dead, but rose
A little higher, to a young girl's height;
Till all the valley glittered like a lake,
Beneath the moonlight, filled with sluggish mist.

That night, the Red Horse grazed beyond the Dam

A stone's throw from the troughs. Men heard him feed, And those that heard him sickened where they lay.

Thus came the sickness to Er-Heb, and slew

Of men a score, and of the women eight,

And of the children two.

Because the road

To Gorukh was a road of enemies,

And Ao-Safai was blocked with early snow,
We could not flee from out the Valley. Death
Smote at us in a slaughter-pen, and Kysh
Was mute as Yabosh, though the goats were slain;
And the Red Horse grazed nightly by the stream,
And later, outward, towards the Unlighted Shrine,
And those that heard him sickened where they lay.

Then said Bisesa to the Priests at dusk,

When the white mist rose up breast-high, and choked The voices in the houses of the dead:

"Yabosh and Kysh avail not. If the Horse

"Reach the Unlighted Shrine we surely die. "Ye have forgotten of all Gods the chief,

"Taman!" Here rolled the thunder through the Hill. And Yabosh shook upon his pedestal.

"Ye have forgotten of all Gods the chief

"Too long." And all were dumb save one, who cried

On Yabosh with the Sapphire 'twixt His knees,

But found no answer in the smoky roof,

And, being smitten of the sickness, died
Before the altar of the Sapphire Shrine.

Then said Bisesa:

"I am near to Death,

"And have the Wisdom of the Grave for gift

"To bear me on the path my feet must tread. "If there be wealth on earth, then I am rich,

"For Armod is the first of all Er-Heb;