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Grand, epic, homicidal; and be you
The Prince to win her!"

"Then follow me, the Prince,”

I answered; " each be hero in his turn!
Seven and yet one, like shadows in a dream.-
Heroic seems our Princess as required.-

But something made to suit with time and place,
A Gothic ruin, and a Grecian house,

A talk of college and of ladies' rights,
A feudal knight in silken masquerade,

And, yonder, shrieks and strange experiments,
For which the good Sir Ralph had burnt them
all,-

This were a medley! we should have him back
Who told the Winter's tale,' to do it for us.
No matter we will say whatever comes.
And let the ladies sing us, if they will,
From time to time, some ballad, or a song,
To give us breathing-space."

So I began,
And the rest followed; and the women sang
Between the rougher voices of the men,
Like linnets in the pauses of the wind:
And here I give the story and the songs.

I.

A PRINCE I was, blue-eyed, and fair in face,
Of temper amorous, as the first of May,
With lengths of yellow ringlet, like a girl,
For on my cradle shone the northern star.

There lived an ancient legend in our house. Some sorcerer, whom a far-off grandsire burnt Because he cast no shadow, had foretold, Dying, that none of all our blood should know The shadow from the substance, and that one Should come to fight with shadows, and to fall. For so, my mother said, the story ran.

And, truly, waking dreams were, more or less,
An old and strange affection of the house.

Myself too had weird seizures, Heaven knows what:
On a sudden, in the midst of men and day,
And while I walked and talked as heretofore,
I seemed to move among a world of ghosts,
And feel myself the shadow of a dream.
Our great court-Galen poised his gilt-head cane,
And pawed his beard, and mutter'd catalepsy.
My mother pitying made a thousand prayers;
My mother was as mild as any saint,
Half-canonized by all that looked on her,
So gracious was her tact and tenderness:
But my good father thought a king a king;
He cared not for the affection of the house;
He held his sceptre like a pedant's wand
To lash offence, and with long arms and hands
Reached out, and picked offenders from the mass
For judgment.

Now it chanced that I had been,
While life was yet in bud and blade, betrothed
To one, a neighboring Princess; she to me
Was proxy-wedded with a bootless calf

At eight years old; and still from time to time
Came murmurs of her beauty from the South,
And of her brethren, youths of puissance;
And still I wore her picture by my heart,
And one dark tress; and all around them both
Sweet thoughts would swarm, as bees about their
queen.

But when the days drew nigh that I should wed. My father sent ambassadors with furs

And jewels, gifts, to fetch her: these brought back
A present, a great labor of the loom;

And therewithal an answer vague as wind:
Besides, they saw the king; he took the gifts;
He said there was a compact; that was true:
But then she had a will; was he to blame?

And maiden fancies; loved to live alone
Among her women: certain would not wed.

That morning in the presence-room I stood With Cyril and with Florian, my two friends: The first, a gentleman of broken means, (His father's fault,) but given to starts and bursts Of revel; and the last, my other heart, And almost my half-self, for still we moved Together, twinned, as horse's ear and eye.

Now while they spake I saw my father's face Grow long and troubled, like a rising moon, Inflamed with wrath: he started on his feet, Tore the king's letter, snowed it down, and rent The wonder of the loom through warp and woof, From skirt to skirt; and at the last he sware That he would send a hundred thousand men, And bring her in a whirlwind; then he chewed The thrice-turned cud of wrath, and cooked his spleen,

Communing with his captains of the war.

At last I spoke. "My father, let me go.
It cannot be but some gross error lies
In this report, this answer of a king,
Whom all men rate as kind and hospitable:
Or, maybe, I myself, my bride once seen,
Whate'er my grief to find her less than fame,
May rue the bargain made." And Florian said:
"I have a sister at the foreign court,

Who moves about the Princess; she, you know,
Who wedded with a nobleman from thence:
He, dying lately, left her, as I hear,

The lady of three castles in that land.

Through her this matter might be sifted clean." And Cyril whispered: "Take me with you too." Then, laughing," What if these weird seizures come Upon you in those lands, and no one near

To point you out the shadow from the truth!
Take me: I'll serve you better in a strait;
I grate on rusty hinges here:" but "No!"
Roared the rough king, "you shall not; we ourself
Will crush her pretty maiden fancies dead
In iron gauntlets: break the council up."

But when the council broke, I rose and passed
Through the wild woods that hung about the town;
Found a still place, and plucked her likeness out;
Laid it on flowers, and watched it lying bathed
In the green gleam of dewy-tasselled trees:
What were those fancies? wherefore break her
troth?

Proud looked the lips: but while I meditated,
A wind arose, and rushed 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, Cat-footed through the town, and half in dread To hear my father's clamor at our backs, With Ho! from some bay-window shake the night; But all was quiet: from the bastioned walls Like threaded spiders, one by one, we dropt, And flying reached the frontier: then we crost To a livelier land; and so, by tilth and grange, And vines, and blowing bosks of wilderness, We gained the mother-city thick with towers, And in the imperial palace found the king. His name was Gama; cracked and small his voice, But bland the smile that like a wrinkling wind On glassy water drove his cheek in lines; 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 my betrothed. "You do us, Prince," he said,
Airing a snowy hand and signet gem,
"All honor. 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 failed.
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 harped on this; with this our banquets rang;
Our dances broke and buzzed 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,
Too awful, sure, for what they treated of,
But all she is and does is awful; odes
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 mastered me. At last she begged 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 even her brother Arac, nor the twins
Her brethren, though 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

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