us _shikar_?

Have I met you and passed you already, unknowing, unthinking, and blind
Shall I meet you next session at Simla, oh, sweetest and best of your
kind?

* * * * *

Ah, Goddess! child, spinster, or widow--as of old on Mars Hill when
they raised
To the God that they knew not an altar--so I, a young Pagan, have
praised.

The Goddess I know not nor worship; yet if half that men tell me be
true,
You will come in the future, and therefore these verses are written
to you.

VI

THE GALLEY SLAVE

Oh, gallant was our galley from her carven steering-wheel
To her figurehead of silver and her beak of hammered steel;
The leg-bar chafed the ankle, and we gasped for cooler air,
But no galley on the water with our galley could compare!

Our bulkheads bulged with cotton and our masts were stepped in gold--
We ran a mighty merchandise of Negroes in the hold;
The white foam spun behind us, and the black shark swam below,
As we gripped the kicking sweep-head and we made that galley go.

It was merry in the galley, for we revelled now and then--
If they wore us down like cattle, faith, we fought and loved like men!
As we snatched her through the water, so we snatched a minute's bliss,
And the mutter of the dying never spoiled the lover's kiss.

Our women and our children toiled beside us in the dark--
They died, we filed their fetters, and we heaved them to the shark--
We heaved them to the fishes, but so fast the galley sped,
We had only time to envy, for we could not mourn our dead.

Bear witness, once my comrades, what a hard-bit gang were we--
The servants of the sweep-head, but the masters of the sea!
By the hands that drove her forward as she plunged and yawed and
sheered,
Woman, Man, or God, or Devil, was there anything we feared?

Was it storm? Our fathers faced it, and a wilder never blew;
Earth that waited for the wreckage watched the galley struggle through.
Burning noon or choking midnight, Sickness, Sorrow, Parting, Death?
Nay our very babes would mock you, had they time for idle breath.

But to-day I leave the galley, and another takes my place;
There's my name upon the deck-beam--let it stand a little space.
I am free--to watch my messmates beating out to open main,
Free of a