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VI

Now the door was one great diamond and the hall a hollow ruby

Big as Beachy Head, my lads, nay bigger by a half! And I sees the mate wi' mouth agape, a-staring like a booby,

And the skipper close behind him, with his tongue out like a calf!

Now the way to take it rightly

Was to walk along politely

Just as if you didn't notice-so I couldn't help but laugh!

For they both forgot their manners and the crew was bound to laugh!

VII

But he took us through his palace, and, my lads, as I'm a sinner,

We walked into an opal like a sunset colored cloud"My dining room," he says, and, quick as light, we saw a dinner

Spread before us by the fingers of a hidden fairy crowd;

And the skipper, swaying gently

After dinner, murmurs faintly,

"I looks to-wards you, Prester John, you've done us very proud!"

And he drank his health with honors, for he done us very proud!

VIII

Then he walks us to his gardens where we sees a feathered demon

Very splendid and important on a sort of spicy tree! "That's the Pheonix," whispers Prester, "which all eddicated seamen

Knows the only one existent, and he's waiting for to flee!

When his hundred years expire

Then he'll set hisself a-fire

And another from his ashes rise most beautiful to see !"

With wings of rose and emerald most beautiful to

see!

IX

Then he says, "In yonder forest there's a little silver river

And whosoever drinks of it, his youth will never die!

The centuries go by, but Prester John endures for

ever

With his music in the mountains and his magic on

the sky!

While

your hearts are growing colder, While your world is growing older,

There's a magic in the distance, where the sea-line meets the sky."

It shall call to singing seamen till the fount o' song is dry!

X

So we thought we'd up and seek it, but that forest fair defied us,—

First a crimson leopard laughed at us most horrible

to see,

Then a sea-green lion came and sniffed and licked his chops and eyed us,

While a red and yellow unicorn was dancing round a tree!

We was trying to look thinner,

Which was hard, because our dinner

Must ha' made us very tempting to a cat o' high degree!

Must ha' made us very tempting to the whole menarjeree!

XI

So we scuttled from that forest and across the poppy

meadows

Where the awful shaggy horror brooded o'er us in

the dark!

And we pushes out from shore again a-jumping at our shadows

And pulls away most joyful to the old black barque! And home again we plodded

While the Polyphemus nodded

With his battered moon-eye winking red and yellow through the dark.

Oh, the moon above the mountains red and yellow through the dark!

XII

Across the seas of Wonderland to London town we

blundered,

Forty singing seamen as was puzzled for to know If the visions that we saw was caused by-here again we pondered—

A tipple in a vision forty thousand years ago.

Could the grog we dreamt we swallowed.

Make us dream of all that followed?

We were simply singing seamen, so of course we didn't know!

We were simply singing seamen, so of course we could not know!

ALFRED NOYES

T

THE BLESSED DAMOZEL

HE blessed damozel leaned out From the gold bar of Heaven; Her eyes were deeper than the depth Of waters stilled at even;

She had three lilies in her hand,

And the stars in her hair were seven.

Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,
No wrought flowers did adorn,
But a white rose of Mary's gift,
For service meetly worn;

The hair that lay along her back
Was yellow like ripe corn.

Herseemed she scarce had been a day

One of God's choristers;

The wonder was not yet quite gone

From that still look of hers;

Albeit, to them she left, her day

Had counted as ten years.

(To one, it is ten years of years. Yet now, and in this place,

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