And I thought the world was strange and wild,
And God with his altar only a child.
IV
Again one year in the prime of June,
I came to the well in the heated noon,
Leaving Rochelle with its red roof tiles
By the Pottery Gate before St. Giles,--
There where the flower market is,
Where every morning up from Duprisse
The flower girls come by the long white lane
That skirts the edge of Bareau plain;--
To the North, the city wall in the sun,
To the left, the fen where the eye may run
And have its will of the blazing blue.
The while I loitered the market through,
Halting a moment to converse
With old Babette who had been my nurse,
There passed through the stalls a woman, bright
With a kirtle of cinnabar and white
Among the kerseys blue; and I said,
"Who is it, Babette, with lifted head,
"And the startled look, possessed and strange,
Under the paint--secure from change?"
"Ah, 'Sieur Jean, do ye not ken
Of the eerie folk of Bareau Fen?"
I blenched, and she knew too well I wist
The fearsome fate of the goblin tryst.
"The street is a cruel home, 'Sieur Jean,
But a weird uncanny drives her on.
"'Tis a bitter tale for Christian folk,
How once she dreamed, and how she woke."
"Ay, ay!" I passed and reached the spring
Where the poplars kept their whispering,
Hid for an hour in the shade,
In the rank marsh grass of a tiny glade.
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