Brake with a blast of trumpets from the gate, So sang the gallant glorious chronicle; And, I all rapt in this," Come out," he said, "To the Abbey: there is Aunt Elizabeth And sister Lilia with the rest." We went (I kept the book and had my finger in it) Down through the park: strange was the sight to me; For all the sloping pasture murmured, sown With happy faces and with holiday. There moved the multitude, a thousand heads: Taught them with facts. One reared a font of stone, And drew, from butts of water on the slope, A little clock-work steamer paddling plied A petty railway ran: a fire-balloon Rose gem-like up before the dusky groves And there through twenty posts of telegraph They flashed a saucy message to and fro Made noise with bees and breeze from end to end. Strange was the sight and smacking of the time; And long we gazed, but satiated at length Came to the ruins. High-arched and ivy-claspt, Of finest Gothic, lighter than a fire, Through one wide chasm of time and frost they gave The park, the crowd, the house; but all within And here we lit on Aunt Elizabeth, And Lilia with the rest, and lady friends From neighbor seats: and there was Ralph himself, That made the old warrior from his ivied nook And there we joined them: then the maiden Aunt And all things great; but we, unworthier, told But honeying at the whisper of a lord; But while they talked, above their heads I saw The feudal warrior lady-clad; which brought My book to mind; and opening this, I read Of old Sir Ralph a page or two that rang With tilt and tourney; then the tale of her That drove her foes with slaughter from her walls, And much I praised her nobleness, and “ Where,” Asked Walter, patting Lilia's head, (she lay Beside him,) "lives there such a woman now?" 66 Quick answered Lilia, " There are thousands now Such women, but convention beats them down: It is but bringing up; no more than that: You men have done it: how I hate you all! Ah, were I something great! I wish I were Some mighty poetess, I would shame you then, That love to keep us children! O, I wish That I were some great Princess, I would build Far off from men a college like a man's, And I would teach them all that men are taught; We are twice as quick!" And here she shook aside The hand that played the patron with her curls. And one said, smiling, "Pretty were the sight If our old halls could change their sex, and flaunt With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans, And sweet girl-graduates in their golden-hair. I think they should not wear our rusty gowns, But move as rich as Emperor-moths, or Ralph Who shines so in the corner; yet I fear, If there were many Lilias in the brood, However deep you might embower the nest, Some boy would spy it." At this upon the sward She tapt her tiny silken-sandaled foot: "That's your light way; but I would make it death For any male thing but to peep at us." Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laughed; A rosebud set with little wilful thorns, And sweet as English air could make her, she : They boated and they cricketed; they talked They lost their weeks; they vext the souls of deans; "True," she said, "We doubt not that. O yes, you missed us much. I'll stake my ruby ring upon it you did." She held it out; and as a parrot turns And wrung it. "Doubt my word again!" he said. So mouldered in a sinecure as he: For while our cloisters echoed frosty feet, Sick for the hollies and the yews of home- Charades and riddles as at Christmas here, And what's my thought and when and where and how, And often told a tale from mouth to mouth As here at Christmas." She remembered that: A pleasant game, she thought: she liked it more But these what kind of tales did men tell men, She wondered, by themselves? A half-disdain Perched on the pouted blossom of her lips: Seven-headed monsters only made to kill "Kill him now, The tyrant! kill him in the summer too," Said Lilia; "Why not now," the maiden Aunt. And something it should be to suit the place, Grave, solemn!" Walter warped his mouth at this Hid in the ruins; till the maiden Aunt Or be yourself your hero if you will." "Take Lilia, then, for heroine," clamored he, "And make her some great Princess, six feet high, |