MY WITCH FLAMES. 73

MY WITCH FLAMES.

THE witch, Flame, stept on a kindling stick,

And leapt with a bound to the apex, quick,

Scattering abroad her blazing hair,

Waving weird arms, wild, red, and bare.

Tossing her smoke-blue mantle o er,

With a crackling laugh, half-hiss, half-roar,

Licking the logs with her lapping tongue,

Writhing, worm-like, the knots among.

While eerie urchins came from her wame,

Skipping some step of an elfin game,

Doing the tricks of their demon dam,

As apes, insane, with an oriflamb.

And their red eyes winked, mid ashes gray,

As they turned and squirmed and vanished away

Stretching, anon, like tip-tailed snake,

Lizard-like, seeming to fall and break.

So I sit and pore at the eldritch race

And their flapping fun in that sooty place,

And hold my toes to the genial heat,

Or nod and grin at a witch-face, sweet.

But it sometimes seems that they stay not there,

But leap and climb in my beard and hair,

Bedaubing my nose with charcoal grimes,

Whirling my wits in mad-cap rhymes.