Laid it on flowers, and watch'd it lying bathed

In the green gleam of dewy-tassell'd trees:

What were those fancies? wherefore break her troth?

Proud look'd the lips: but while I meditated

A wind arose and rush'd upon the South,

And shook the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks

Of the wild woods together; and a Voice

Went with it Follow, follow, thou shalt win.'

Then, ere the silver sickle of that month

Became her golden shield, I stole from court
With Cyril and with Florian, unperceived.
Down from the bastion'd wall, suspense by night,
Like threaded spiders from a balk, we dropt,
And flying reach'd the frontier: then we crost
To a livelier land; and so by tilth and grange,
And vines, and blowing bosks of wilderness,
We gain'd the mother-city thick with towers,
And in the imperial palace found the king.

His name was Gama; crack'd and small his voice,

But bland the smile that pucker'd up his cheeks;

A little dry old man, without a star,

Not like a king: three days he feasted us, :

And on the fourth I spake of why we came,

And betroth'd. You do us, Prince,' he said, my

Airing a snowy hand and signet gem,

• All honour. We remember love ourselves

In our sweet youth: there did a compact pass
Long summers back, a kind of ceremony-

I think the year in which our olives fail'd.

I would you had her, Prince, with all my heart,
With my full heart but there were widows here,
Two widows, Lady Psyche, lady Blanche ;
They fed her theories, in and out of place

Maintaining that with equal husbandry

The woman were an equal to the man.

They harp'd on this; with this our banquets rang;

Our dances broke and buzz'd in knots of talk ;

Nothing but this; my very ears were hot

To hear them knowledge, so my daughter held,

:

Was all in all; they had but been, she thought,
As children; they must lose the child, assume
The woman: then, Sir, awful odes she wrote,
About this losing of the child,-and rhymes
And dismal lyrics prophesying change,

Beyond all reason: these the women sang;

And they that know such things-I sought but peace; No critic I would call them masterpieces:

They master'd me. At last she begg❜d a boon

A certain summer-palace which I have

Hard by your father's frontier: I said no,

Yet being an easy man, gave it; and there,
All wild to found an University

For maidens, on the spur she fled; and more
We know not,-only this: they see no men,
Not ev'n her brother Arac, nor the twins

Her brethren, tho' they love her, look upon

her

As on a kind of paragon; and I

(Pardon me saying it) were much loth to breed

Dispute betwixt myself and mine: but since

(And I confess with right) you think me bound

In some sort, I can give you letters to her;

And yet, to speak the truth, I rate your chance Almost at naked nothing.'

Thus the king;

And I, tho' nettled that he seem'd to slur
With garrulous ease and oily courtesies

Our formal compact, yet not less all frets
But chafing me on fire to find my bride,
Set out once more with those two gallant boys:
Many a long league back to the North we past,
And came (the fern-owl whirring in the copse)
Upon a little town within a wood

Close at the boundary of the liberties;

There enter'd an old hostel, call'd mine host
To council, plied him with his richest wines,
And show'd the late-writ letters of the king.

He, with a long low sibilation, stared

As blank as death in marble; then exclaim'd

Averring it was clear against all rules

For any man to go: but as his brain

Began to mellow, 'If the king,' he said,

'Had given us letters, was he bound to speak?

The king would bear him out ;' and at the last— The summer of the vine in all his veins

'No doubt that we might make it worth his while. She once had past that way; he heard her speak; She look'd as grand as doomsday and as grave; And he, he reverenced his liege-lady there; He always made a point to post with mares ;

His daughter and his housemaid were the boys.
The land he understood for miles about

Was till'd by women; all the swine were sows,
And all the dogs'-

But while he jested thus,

A thought flash'd thro' me which I clothed in act,

Remembering how we three presented Maid