TWO SONGS OF A FOOL
  I
 A SPECKLED cat and a tame hare
 Eat at my hearthstone
 And sleep there;
 And both look up to me alone
 For learning and defence
 As I look up to providence.
 I start out of my sleep to think
 Some day I may forget
 Their food and drink;
 Or, the house door left unshut,
 The hare may run till it's found
 The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound.
 I bear a burden that might well try
 Men that do all by rule,
 And what can I
 That am a wandering-witted fool
 But pray to God that He ease
 My great responsibilities?
 I slept on my three-legged stool by thc fire.
 The speckled cat slept on my knee;
 We never thought to enquire
 Where the brown hare might be,
 And whether the door were shut.
 Who knows how she drank the wind
 Stretched up on two legs from the mat,
 Before she had settled her mind
 To drum with her heel and to leap?
 Had I but awakened from sleep
 And called her name, she had heard.
 It may be, and had not stirred,
 That now, it may be, has found
 The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound.
 
 ANOTHER SONG OF A FOOL
 
 THIS great purple butterfly,
 In the prison of my hands,
 Has a learning in his eye
 Not a poor fool understands.
 Once he lived a schoolmaster
 With a stark, denying look;
 A string of scholars went in fear
 Of his great birch and his great book.
 Like the clangour of a bell,
 Sweet and harsh, harsh and sweet.
 That is how he learnt so well
 To take the roses for his meat.