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Or Nymph, or Goddess, at high tide of feast,
In masque or pageant at my father's court.
We sent mine host to purchase female gear;
He brought it, and himself, a sight to shake
The midriff of despair with laughter, holp
To lace us up, till, each, in maiden plumes
We rustled him we gave a costly bribe

To guerdon silence, mounted our good steeds,
And boldly ventured on the liberties.

We rode till midnight when the college lights Began to glitter firefly-like in copse

And linden alley; then we past an arch,

Whereon a woman-statue rose with wings

From four wing'd horses dark against the stars;

And some inscription ran along the front,

But deep in shadow. Further on we gain'd
A little street half garden and half house;
But scarce could hear each other speak for noise
Of clocks and chimes, like silver hammers falling

On silver anvils, and the splash and stir

Of fountains spouted up and showering down

In meshes of the jasmine and the rose :
And all about us peal'd the nightingale,

Rapt in her song, and careless of the snare.

There stood a bust of Pallas for a sign,

By two sphere lamps blazon'd like Heaven and Earth With constellation and with continent,

Above an entry: riding in, we call'd;

A plump-arm'd Ostleress and a stable wench
Came running at the call, and help'd us down.
Then stept a buxom hostess forth, and sail'd,
Full-blown, before us into rooms which gave
Upon a pillar'd porch, the bases lost

In laurel her we ask'd of that and this,

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One voice, we cried; and I sat down and wrote,

In such a hand as when a field of corn

Bows all its ears before the roaring East;

'Three ladies of the Northern empire pray

Your Highness would enroll them with your own, As Lady Psyche's pupils.'

This I seal'd:

The seal was Cupid bent above a scroll,

And over him Uranian Venus hung,

And raised the blinding bandage from his eyes:

I gave

the letter to be sent with dawn;

And then to bed, where half in doze I seem'd To float about a glimmering night, and watch A full sea glazed with muffled moonlight, swell On some dark shore just seen that it was rich.

As thro' the land at eve we went,
And pluck'd the ripen'd ears,

We fell out, my wife and I,

And kiss'd again with tears:

And blessings on the falling-out
That all the more endears,

When we fall out with those we love,
And kiss again with tears!

For when we came where lies the child

We lost in other years,

There above the little grave,

We kiss'd again with tears.

II.

AT break of day the College Portress came :

She brought us Academic silks, in hue

The lilac, with a silken hood to each,

And zoned with gold; and now when these were on,

And we as rich as moths from dusk cocoons,

She, curtseying her obeisance, let us know

The Princess Ida waited out we paced,

I first, and following thro' the porch that sang
All round with laurel, issued in a court

Compact of lucid marbles, boss'd with lengths
Of classic frieze, with ample awnings gay
Betwixt the pillars, and with great urns of flowers.
The Muses and the Graces, group'd in threes,
Enring'd a billowing fountain in the midst;

And here and there on lattice edges lay

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