Sat muffled like the Fates; and often came Melissa hitting all we saw with shafts Of gentle satire, kin to charity, That harm'd not: then day droopt; the chapel bells Call'd us we left the walks; we mixt with those Before two streams of light from wall to wall, Of solemn psalms, and silver litanies, The work of Ida, to call down from Heaven A blessing on her labours for the world. Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea! Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dropping moon, and blow, Blow him again to me ; While my little one, while my pretty one sleeps. Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, Father will come to thee soon; Rest, rest, on mother's breast, Father will come to thee soon ; Father will come to his babe in the nest, Silver sails all out of the west Under the silver moon: Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep. III. MORN in the white wake of the morning star We rose, and each by other drest with care In shadow, but the Muses' heads were touch'd There while we stood beside the fount, and watch'd Or seem'd to watch the dancing bubble, approach'd Melissa, tinged with wan from lack of sleep, Or grief, and glowing round her dewy eyes The circled Iris of a night of tears; And fly' she cried, O fly, while yet you may! My mother knows :' and when I ask'd her how 6 'My fault' she wept my fault! and yet not mine; Yet mine in part. O hear me, pardon me. My mother, 'tis her wont from night to night She says the Princess should have been the Head, And so it was agreed when first they came ; But Lady Psyche was the right hand now, And she the left, or not, or seldom used ; Her countrywomen! she did not envy her. 66 Who ever saw such wild barbarians? "Girls?—more like men!" and at these words the snake, My secret, seem'd to stir within my breast; Began to burn and burn, and her lynx eye To fix and make me hotter, till she laugh'd : "O marvellously modest maiden, you! Men! girls, like men! why, if they had been men You need not set your thoughts in rubric thus For wholesale comment." Pardon, I am shamed That I must needs repeat for my excuse What looks so little graceful : 66 men" (for still My mother went revolving on the word) "And so they are,—very like men indeed— Then came these dreadful words out one by one, "Why-these-are—men : I shudder'd: "and you know it.' "O ask me nothing," I said: 66 And she knows too, And she conceals it." So my mother clutch'd The truth at once, but with no word from me ; And now thus early risen she goes to inform 'What pardon, sweet Melissa, for a blush?' Said Cyril Pale one, blush again: than wear Those lilies, better blush our lives away. Yet let us breathe for one hour more in Heaven' |