Among the columns, pacing staid and still How might a man not wander from his wits One walk'd reciting by herself, and one In this hand held a volume as to read, And smoothed a petted peacock down with that: Some to a low song oar'd a shallop by, Or under arches of the marble bridge Hung, shadow'd from the heat: some hid and sought In the orange thickets: others tost a ball Above the fountain-jets, and back again With laughter others lay about the lawns, : Of the older sort, and murmur'd that their May Of gentle satire, kin to charity, That harm'd not so we sat; and now when day Of solemn psalms, and silver litanies, The work of Ida, to call down from Heaven A blessing on her labours for the world. III. MORN in the white wake of the morning star We rose, and each by other drest with care In shadow, but the Muses' heads were touch'd And while we stood beside the fount, and watch'd Or seem'd to watch the dancing bubble, approach'd Melissa, tinged with wan from lack of sleep, 6 Or sorrow, and glowing round her dewy eyes The circled Iris of a night of tears; And fly' she cried, ' O fly, while yet you may! 'My mother knows :' and we demanding 'how' My fault' she wept my fault! and yet not mine; Yet mine in part. O hear me, pardon me. My mother, 'tis her wont from night to night To rail at Lady Psyche and her side. She says the Princess should have been the Head, And so it was agreed when first they came; And so last night she fell to canvass you : Her countrywomen! she did not envy her. "Who ever saw such wild barbarians? "Girls ?-more like men!" and at these words the snake, My secret, seem'd to stir within my breast; And oh, Sirs, could I help it, but my cheek Began to burn and burn, and her lynx eye To fix and make me hotter, till she laugh'd: O marvellously modest maiden, you! Men! girls, like men! why, if they had been men, You need not take so deep a rouge: like men And so they are,-very like men indeed And closeted with her for hours. Aha! Then came these dreadful words out one by one, 66 Why-these-are—men : I shudder'd: "and you know it." "O ask me nothing," I said: "And she knows too, And she conceals it." So my mother clutch'd The truth at once, but with no word from me ; And now thus early risen she goes to inform The Princess Lady Psyche will be crush'd; But you may yet be saved, and therefore fly : But heal me with your pardon ere you go.' 'What pardon, sweet Melissa, for a blush? Said Cyril Pale one, blush again: than wear Those lilies, better blush our lives away. Yet let us breathe for one hour more in Heaven' He added, 'lest some classic Angel speak E |