He gave no sign of making bare,
     Nor she of faintness or despair. 
     Inflamed with hope that she might win,
     If she but coaxed him to begin,
     She used all arts for making fain;
     The mother with her babe was Jane.

     XXXI

     Now stamped the Squire, and knowing not
     Her business, waved her from the spot. 
     Encircled by the men of might,
     The head of Jane, like flickering light,
     As in a charger, they beheld
     Ere she was from the park expelled.

     XXXII

     Her grief, in jumps of earthly weight,
     Did Jane around communicate: 
     For that the moment when began
     The holy but mistaken man,
     In view of light, to take his lift,
     They cut him from her charm adrift!

     XXXIII

     And he was lost:  a banished face
     For ever from the ways of grace,
     Unless pinched hard by dreams in fright. 
     They saw the Bishop’s wavering sprite
     Within her look, at come and go,
     Long after he had caused her woe.

     XXXIV

     Her greying eyes (until she sank
     At Fredsham on the wayside bank,
     Like cinder heaps that whitened lie
     From coals that shot the flame to sky)
     Had glassy vacancies, which yearned
     For one in memory discerned.

     XXXV

     May those who ply the tongue that cheats,
     And those who rush to beer and meats,
     And those whose mean ambition aims
     At palaces and titled names,
     Depart in such a cheerful strain
     As did our Jump-to-glory Jane!

     XXXVI

     Her end was beautiful:  one sigh. 
     She jumped a foot when it was nigh. 
     A lily in a linen clout
     She looked when they had laid her out. 
     It is a lily-light she bears
     For England up the ladder-stairs.

     The riddle for men

     I

     This Riddle rede or die,
     Says History since our Flood,
     To warn her sons of power:-
     It can be truth, it can be lie;
     Be parasite to twist awry;
     The drouthy vampire for your blood;
     The fountain of the silver flower;
     A brand, a lure, a web, a crest;
     Supple of wax or tempered steel;
     The spur to honour, snake in nest: 
     ’Tis as you will with it to deal;
     To wear upon the breast,
     Or trample under heel.

     II

     And rede you not aright,
     Says Nature, still in red
     Shall History’s tale be writ! 
     For solely thus you lead to light
     The trailing chapters she must write,
     And pass my fiery test of dead
     Or living through the furnace-pit: 
     Dislinked from who the softer hold
     In grip of brute, and brute remain: 
     Of whom the woeful tale is told,
     How for one short Sultanic reign,
     Their bodies lapse to mould,
     Their souls behowl the plain.