John Vilas watched them go off through the wood To get the water from the other spring, The big pail clanking between them. His hard mouth Was wry with an old nursery-rhyme, but his eyes Looked somewhere beyond hardness. Let them go. Harriet said and Harriet always said And Harriet was right, but let them go. Men who go looking for the wilderness-stone And find it, should not marry or beget, But, having done so, they must take the odds As the odds are. Faustus and I are old. We creep about among the hollow trees Where the bright devils of our youth have gone Like a dissolving magic, back to earth. But in our tarnished and our antique wands And in the rusty metal of our spells There still remain such stubbornness and pith As may express elixirs from a rock Or pick a further quarrel with the gods Should we find cause enough. I know this girl,