Page:The Collected Poems of Dora Sigerson Shorter.djvu/27

“There came to me there a stranger man,
And these are the words he spake:
‘The fruit you carry I fain would buy,
I pray you my gold to take.’

“The fruit I carried he then did buy—
You lying beneath my heart—
I tended to him the ripe peach-bough
He tore the gold branch apart.

“He whispered then in my frightened ear
The name of the Evil One,
‘And this have I bought to-day,’ he said—
  The soul of your unborn son.

“‘The fruit you carry, which I did buy,
Will ripen before I claim;
And when the bells for his wedding ring
Again you shall hear my name.’”

Now Dermod rose from his mother's side,
And all loud and long laughed he.
He bore her down to the wedding-guests,
All sorrowful still was she.

“Now, cry no more, sweet mother,” he said,
“For you are a doleful sight
And who is there in the banquet-hall
Can claim my soul to-night?”

Then one rose up from the wedding throng.
But his face no man could see,
And he said, “Now bid your dear farewell,
For your soul belongs to me.”

Young Dermod stood like a stricken man.
His mother she swooned away;
But his love ran quick to the stranger's side.
And to him she this did say:—