GODIVA. I waited for the train at Coventry; I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge, The city's ancient legend into this :— Not only we, the latest seed of Time, New men, that in the flying of a wheel And loathed to see them overtax'd; but she Did more, and underwent, and overcame, The woman of a thousand summers back, Upon his town, and all the mothers brought Their children, clamouring, "If we pay, we starve She sought her lord, and found him, where he strode About the hall, among his dogs, alone, His beard a foot before him, and his hair A yard behind. She told him of their tears, And pray'd him, "If they pay this tax, they starve.” Whereat he stared, replying, half-amazed, "You would not let your little finger ache For such as these? ". -"But I would die," said she. Till pity won. She sent a herald forth, And bad him cry, with sound of trumpet, all The hard condition; but that she would loose Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there The gateway; there she found her palfrey trapt In purple blazon'd with armorial gold. Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity: The deep air listen'd round her as she rode, And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear. The little wide-mouth'd heads upon the spout Had cunning eyes to see: the barking cur Made her cheek flame: her palfrey's footfall shot Light horrors thro' her pulses: the blind walls Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity: Peep'd-but his eyes, before they had their will, And dropt before him. So the Powers, who wait And she, that knew not, pass'd: and all at once, One after one but even then she gain'd Her bower; whence reissuing, robed and crown'd, To meet her lord, she took the tax away, THE TWO VOICES. A STILL Small voice spake unto me, "Thou art so full of misery, Were it not better not to be?' Then to the still small voice I said; "Let me not cast in endless shade What is so wonderfully made." To which the voice did urge reply; To-day I saw the dragon-fly Come from the wells where he did lie. |