She spoke and turn'd her sumptuous head with
Of shining expectation fixt on mine.
Then while I dragg'd my brains for such a song, Cyril, with whom the bell - mouth'd glass had wrought,
Or master'd by the sense of sport, began
To troll a careless, careless tavern-catch
Of Moll and Meg, and strange experiences
Unmeet for ladies. Florian nodded at him,
I frowning; Psyche flush'd and wann'd and shook;
The lilylike Melissa droop'd her brows.
( Forbear,' the Princess cried; Forbear, sir,' I; And heated thro' and thro' with wrath and love, I smote him on the breast. He started up; There rose a shriek as of a city sack'd;
Melissa clamor'd, Flee the death;'To horse!'
Said Ida, home! to horse!' and fled, as flies.
A troop of snowy doves athwart the dusk
When some one batters at the dovecote doors,
Disorderly the women. Alone I stood
With Florian, cursing Cyril, vext at heart
In the pavilion. There like parting hopes
I heard them passing from me; hoof by hoof,
And every hoof a knell to my desires,
Clang'd on the bridge; and then another shriek,
The Head, the Head, the Princess, O the Head !' For blind with rage she miss'd the plank, and roll'd In the river. Out I sprang from glow to gloom;
There whirl'd her white robe like a blossom'd
Rapt to the horrible fall. A glance I gave,
No more, but woman-vested as I was
Plunged, and the flood drew; yet I caught her;
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
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
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,
'They seek us; out so late is out of rules.
Moreover, "Seize the strangers" is the cry.
How came you here?' I told him.
'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 water-lily 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
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 ankle 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
Damp from the river; and close behind her stood Eight daughters of the plough, stronger than men, Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain,
Each was like a Druid rock; Or like a spire of land that stands apart
Cleft from the main, and wail'd about with mews.
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