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XVIII.
ANONYMOUS PLAYS.
More yet and more, and yet we mark not all:
The Warning fain to bid fair women heed
Its hard brief note of deadly doom and deed;[1]
The verse that strewed too thick with flowers the hall
Whence Nero watched his fiery festival;[2]
That iron page wherein men’s eyes who read
See, bruised and marred between two babes that bleed,
A mad red-handed husband’s martyr fall;[3]
The scene which crossed and streaked with mirth the strife
Of Henry with his sons and witchlike wife;[4]
And that sweet pageant of the kindly fiend,
Who, seeing three friends in spirit and heart made one,
Crowned with good hap the true-love wiles he screened
In the pleached lanes of pleasant Edmonton.[5]
