No more; but woman-vested as I was

Plunged; and the flood drew; yet I caught her; then

Oaring one arm, and bearing in my left

The weight of all the hopes of half the world,

Strove to buffet to land in vain. A tree

Was half-disrooted from his place and stoop'd
To drench his dark locks in the gurgling wave
Mid-channel. Right on this we drove and caught,
And grasping down the boughs I gain'd the shore.

There stood her maidens glimmeringly group'd

In the hollow bank. One reaching forward drew

My burthen from mine arms; they cried she lives ! '

They bore her back into the tent: but I,

So much a kind of shame within me wrought,
Not yet endured to meet her opening eyes,
Nor found my friends; but push'd alone on foot
(For since her horse was lost I left her mine)
Across the woods, and less from Indian craft
Than beelike instinct hiveward, found at length

The garden portals. Two great statues, Art
And Science, Caryatids, lifted up

A weight of emblem, and betwixt were valves

Of open-work in which the hunter rued

His rash intrusion, manlike, but his brows
Had sprouted, and the branches thereupon
Spread out at top, and grimly spiked the gates.

A little space was left between the horns, Thro' which I clamber'd o'er at top with pain, Dropt on the sward, and up the linden walks, And, tost on thoughts that changed from hue to hue, Now poring on the glowworm, now the star,

I paced the terrace, till the bear had wheel'd

Thro' a great arc his seven slow suns.

Of lightest echo, then a loftier form

A step

Than female, moving thro' the uncertain gloom,
Disturb'd me with the doubt if this were she'

But it was Florian. 'Hist O hist,' he said,

G

They seek us out so late is out of rules.

Moreover" seize the strangers" is the cry.

How came you here?' I told him; 'I' said he 'Last of the train, a moral leper, I,

To whom none spake, half-sick at heart, return'd. Arriving all confused among the rest

With hooded brows I crept into the hall,

And, couch'd behind a Judith, underneath
The head of Holofernes peep'd and saw.
Girl after girl was call'd to trial: each
Disclaim'd all knowledge of us last of all
Melissa trust me, Sir, I pitied her.

She, question'd if she knew us men, at first
Was silent; closer prest, denied it not :
And then, demanded if her mother knew,

Or Psyche, she affirm'd not, or denied:

From whence the Royal mind, familiar with her, Easily gather'd either guilt. She sent

For Psyche, but she was not there; she call'd

For Psyche's child to cast it from the doors;

She sent for Blanche to accuse her face to face;

And I slipt out but whither will you now?
And where are Psyche, Cyril? both are fled.
What, if together? that were not so well.
Would rather we had never come! I dread
His wildness, and the chances of the dark.'

'And yet,' I said, 'you wrong him more than I That struck him: this is proper to the clown, Tho' smock'd, or furr'd and purpled, still the clown, To harm the thing that trusts him, and to shame That which he says he loves: for Cyril, howe'er He deal in frolic, as to-night-the song

Might have been worse and sinn'd in grosser lips Beyond all pardon-as it is, I hold

These flashes on the surface are not he.

He has a solid base of temperament:

But as the waterlily starts and slides

Upon the level in little puffs of wind,

Tho' anchor'd to the bottom, such is he.'

Scarce had I ceased when from a tamarisk near

Two Proctors leapt upon us, crying, 'Names'

He, standing still, was clutch'd; but I began
To thrid the musky-circled mazes, wind

And double in and out the boles, and race

By all the fountains: fleet I was of foot :
Before me shower'd the rose in flakes; behind

I heard the puff'd pursuer; at mine ear
Bubbled the nightingale and heeded not,
And secret laughter tickled all my soul.
At last I hook'd my ancle in a vine,
That claspt the feet of a Mnemosyne,
And falling on my face was caught and known.

They haled us to the Princess where she sat
High in the hall above her droop'd a lamp,
And made the single jewel on her brow
Burn like the mystic fire on a mast-head,

Prophet of storm: a handmaid on each side

Bow'd toward her, combing out her long black hair