He answer'd," Ride you naked thro' the town, He parted, with great strides among his dogs. As winds from all the compass shift and blow, And bade him cry, with sound of trumpet, all The hard condition; but that she would loose Should keep within, door shut, and window barr'd. Unclasp'd the wedded eagles of her belt, And shower'd the rippled ringlets to her knee; Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid The gateway; there she found her palfrey trapt Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity: The deep air listen'd round her as she rode, And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear. The little wide-mouth'd heads upon the spout Had cunning eyes to see: the barking cur Made her cheek flame: her palfrey's footfall shot Light horrors thro' her pulses: the blind walls Were full of chinks and holes; and overhead Fantastic gables, crowding, stared: but she Not less thro' all bore up, till, last, she saw The white-flower'd elder-thicket from the field Gleam thro' the Gothic archways in the wall. TID Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity And one low churl, compact of thankless earth, The fatal byword of all years to come, Boring a little augur-hole in fear, Peep'd-but his eyes, before they had their will, Were shrivell❜d into darkness in his head, And dropt before him. So the Powers, who wait On noble deeds, cancell❜d a sense misused; And she, that knew not, pass'd: and all at once, With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon Was clash'd and hammer'd from a hundred towers, One after one: but even then she gain'd Her bower; whence reissuing, robed and crown'd. To meet her lord, she took the tax away And built herself an everlasting name. Spottiswoode & Co., Printers. London. |