BEGGAR'S GOLD

Around me sounded effort manifold,

As creaking cranes swung ponderously slow,

At intervals I heard the hiss of steam,

The rhythmic beating of an iron's blow:

I thought,— this energy will sometime be

Transmuted into that which all men crave,

The magic metal, Gold, great Titan Gold,

Whom men make monarch when he should be slave.

And as I mused, above the jarring clang,

I heard a faint sweet sound of flutterings,

A tender movement, musical and low,

As of a fledgeling trying its young wings.

A gentle zephyr blew the casement wide,

A woman glided past the tapestry,

With russet golden hair, all gowned in gold.

She looked about her hesitatingly;

I heard her voice as if thro’ beechen boughs,

Caressive as a moor-born singing burn,

And thro’ it ran the lisping of the pines,

The lovely lilt of some gold-dying fern.

( She sang ):

“Ye seek the gold of the city;

Ye cheat, ye brag, ye lie;

In quest of its sordid yellow

Ye hunger until ye die.

I offer ye gold for the having:

The mint of October's glow,

To warm your souls with its wonder,

Your souls, in their greed-bound snow.

Gold of the hedges I offer,

Marvellous gold of the ghyll,

Rowan-red gold from the forest,

Take from me, ye who will.

Gold ye need for your bodies,

O men of the smoke-chained town.

But know, that my gold's for the asking,

Gold for a Beggar's Crown.”

She silently sped

As a star at morn

In the saffron track,

Of the day, dew-born,

Leaving a longing

Intensely strong

To own for myself

The gold of the song.

The city I'll leave

With footstep bold,

To seek for myself

The Beggar's Gold.

I woke and found a leaf upon the floor,

And two more golden leaves outside the door.