_Tick, tack, tick, tack_, I couldn't wait no longer!
Up I gets and bows polite and pleasant as a toff--
"Arternoon," I says, "I'm glad your boots are going stronger;
Only thing I'm dreading is your feet 'ull both come off."
_Tick, tack, tick, tack_, she didn't stop to answer,
"Arternoon," she says, and sort o' chokes a little cough,
"I must get to Piddinghoe tomorrow if I can, sir!"
"Demme, my good woman! Haw! Don't think I mean to loff,"
Says I, like a toff,
"Where d'you mean to sleep tonight? God made this grass for go'ff."

His masterpiece, _The Barrel-Organ_, has something of Kipling's
rollicking music, with less noise and more refinement. Out of the
mechanical grinding of the hand organ, with the accompaniment of city
omnibuses, we get the very breath of spring in almost intolerable
sweetness. This poem affects the head, the heart, and the feet. I defy
any man or woman to read it without surrendering to the magic of the
lilacs, the magic of old memories, the magic of the poet. Nor has one
ever read this poem without going immediately back to the first line,
and reading it all over again, so susceptible are we to the romantic
pleasure of melancholy.

Mon coeur est un luth suspendu:
Sitôt qu'on le touche, il résonne.

Alfred Noyes understands the heart of the child; as is proved by his
_Flower of Old Japan_, and _Forest of Wild Thyme_, a kind of
singing Alice-in-Wonderland. These are the veritable stuff of
dreams--wholly apart from the law of causation--one vision fading into