4. I kiss'd her slender hand, She took the kiss sedately; Maud is not seventeen, But she is tall and stately. 5. I to cry out on pride Who have won her favor! O Maud were sure of Heaven If lowliness could save her. 6. I know the way she went Home with her maiden posy, For her feet have touched the meadows And left the daisies rosy. 7. Birds in the high Hall-garden Were crying and calling to her, Where is Maud, Maud, Maud, One is come to woo her. 8. Look, a horse at the door, And little King Charles is snarling, Go back, my lord, across the moor, You are not her darling. 4 SCORN'D, to be scorned by one that I scorn, Is that a matter to make me fret? That a calamity hard to be borne ? Well, he may live to hate me yet. I past him, I was crossing his lands; He stood on the path a little aside; His face, as I grant, in spite of spite, And six feet two, as I think, he stands; But his essences turn'd the live air sick, Sunn'd itself on his breast and his hands. 2. Who shall call me ungentle, unfair, And curving a contumelious lip, Gorgonised me from head to foot With a stony British stare. 3. Why sits he here in his father's chair? That old man never comes to his place : Shall I believe him ashamed to be seen? For only once, in the village street, Last year, I caught a glimpse of his face, A gray old wolf and a lean. Scarcely, now, would I call him a cheat; For then, perhaps, as a child of deceit, She might by a true descent be untrue; And Maud is as true as Maud is sweet: Tho' I fancy her sweetness only due To the sweeter blood by the other side; Her mother has been a thing complete, However she came to be so allied. And fair without, faithful within, Maud to him is nothing akin : Some peculiar mystic grace Made her only the child of her mother, And heap'd the whole inherited sin On that huge scapegoat of the race, All, all upon the brother. 4. Peace, angry spirit, and let him be! Has not his sister smiled on me? |