And then we stroll'd From room to room: in each we sat, we heard The grave Professor. On the lecture slate The circle rounded under female hands With flawless demonstration: follow'd then A classic lecture, rich in sentiment, With scraps of thundrous Epic lilted out By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long, That treats of whatsoever is, the state, The total chronicles of man, the mind, The morals, something of the frame, the rock, The star, the bird, the fish, the shell, the flower, Electric, chemic laws, and all the rest, And whatsoever can be taught and known; Till like three horses that have broken fence, And glutted all night long breast-deep in corn, We issued gorged with knowledge, and I spoke : Why, Sirs, they do all this as well as we.' 'They hunt old trails,' said Cyril, very well; But when did woman ever yet invent?' 'Ungracious!' answer'd Florian, 'have you learnt A thousand hearts lie fallow in these halls, Shall those three castles patch my tatter'd coat? For dear are those three castles to my wants, And two dear things are one of double worth, The Doctors! O to watch the thirsty plants Imbibing! once or twice I thought to roar, {but To break my chain, to shake my mane : (but come, Modulate me, soul of mincing mimicry! Make liquid treble of that bassoon, my throat; Abase those eyes that ever loved to meet Star-sisters answering under crescent brows; Abate the stride, which speaks of man, and loose A flying charm of blushes o'er this cheek, Where they like swallows coming out of time Will wonder why they came :}but hark the bell And in we stream'd Among the columns, pacing staid and still With beauties every shade of brown and fair, Pierced thro' with eyes, but that I kept mine own 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 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. |