The Five Students

      The sparrow dips in his wheel-rut bath,
         The sun grows passionate-eyed,
   And boils the dew to smoke by the paddock-path;
         As strenuously we stride, -
Five of us; dark He, fair He, dark She, fair She, I,
            All beating by.
      The air is shaken, the high-road hot,
         Shadowless swoons the day,
   The greens are sobered and cattle at rest; but not
         We on our urgent way, -
Four of us; fair She, dark She, fair He, I, are there,
            But one--elsewhere.
      Autumn moulds the hard fruit mellow,
         And forward still we press
   Through moors, briar-meshed plantations, clay-pits yellow,
         As in the spring hours--yes,
Three of us:  fair He, fair She, I, as heretofore,
            But--fallen one more.
      The leaf drops:  earthworms draw it in
         At night-time noiselessly,
   The fingers of birch and beech are skeleton-thin,
            And yet on the beat are we, -
Two of us; fair She, I.  But no more left to go
               The track we know.
      Icicles tag the church-aisle leads,
         The flag-rope gibbers hoarse,
   The home-bound foot-folk wrap their snow-flaked heads,
            Yet I still stalk the course, -
One of us . . . Dark and fair He, dark and fair She, gone:
               The rest--anon.