Volume 158 — LABUNTUR ANNI.

Light in the East, the dawn wind singing, Solemn and grey and chill, Rose in the sky, with Orion swinging Down to the distant hill; The grass dew-pearled and the mohwa shaking Her scented petals across the track, And the herd astir to the new day breaking— Gods! how it all comes back. So it was, and on such a morning Somebody's bullet sped, And you, as you called to the herd a warning, Dropped in the grasses dead; And some stout hunter's heart was brimming For joy that the gods of sport were good— With a lump in his throat and his eyes a-dimming, As the eyes of sportsmen should;— As mine have done in the springtime running, As mine in the halcyon days Ere trigger-finger had lapsed from cunning Or foot from the forest ways, When I'd wake with the stars and the sunrise meeting In the dewy fragrance of myrrh and musk, Peacock and spurfowl sounding a greeting And the jungle mine till dusk. You take me back to the valleys of laughter, The hills that hunters love, The sudden rain and the sunshine after, The cloud and the blue above, The morning mist and creatures crying, The beat in the drowsy afternoon, Clear-washed eve with the sunset dying, Night and the hunter's moon. Not till all trees and jungles perish Shall we go back that way To those dear hills that the hunters cherish, Where the hearts of the hunters stay; So you dream on of the ancient glories, Of water-meadows and hinds and stags, While I and my like tell old, old stories ... Ah! but it drags—it drags. H. B.

"Matrimony.