And ever they kept their green-glass eyes
Fixed on me with a stony stare--
Till my own grew glazed with a dread surmise,
And my hat whooped up on my lifted hair,
And I felt the heart in my breast snap to
As you've heard the lid of a snuff-box do.
And they sang "You're asleep! There is no board-fence,
And never a Goblin with green-glass eyes!--
'Tis only a vision the mind invents
After a supper of cold mince-pies,--
And you're doomed to dream this way," they said,--
"_And you sha'n't wake up till you're clean plum dead!_"
[Illustration: The Nine Little Goblins--Tailpiece]
TIME OF CLEARER TWITTERINGS
[Illustration: Time of Clearer Twitterings--Title]
I.
Time of crisp and tawny leaves,
And of tarnished harvest sheaves,
And of dusty grasses--weeds--
Thistles, with their tufted seeds
Voyaging the Autumn breeze
Like as fairy argosies:
Time of quicker flash of wings,
And of clearer twitterings
In the grove, or deeper shade
Of the tangled everglade,--
Where the spotted water-snake
Coils him in the sunniest brake;
And the bittern, as in fright,
Darts, in sudden, slanting flight,
Southward, while the startled crane
Films his eyes in dreams again.
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