III. MORN in the white wake of the morning star In shadow, but the Muses' heads were touch'd And while we stood beside the fount, and watch'd And fly,' she cried, 'O fly, while yet you may! 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, Herself and Lady Psyche the two arms; 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 To fix and make me hotter, till she laugh'd: 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, And she conceals it." So my mother clutch'd '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 But I will melt this marble into wax To yield us farther furlough:' and he went. Melissa shook her doubtful curls, and thought He scarce would prosper. 'Tell us,' Florian ask'd, 'How grew this feud betwixt the right and left.' 'O long ago,' she said, 'betwixt these two Division smoulders hidden: 't is my mother, Too jealous, often fretful as the wind Pent in a crevice: much I bear with her: I never knew my father, but she says (God pardon her) she was wedded to a fool; And still she rail'd against the state of things. She had the care of Lady Ida's youth, And from the Queen's decease she brought her up. But when your sister came she won the love Of the Princess: they were still together, grew (For so they said themselves) inosculated; Consonant chords that shiver to one note; One mind in all things: only Lady Blanche Affirms your Psyche thieved her theories, Then murmur'd Florian, gazing after her: 'An open-hearted maiden, true and pure. If I could love, why this were she: how pretty Her blushing was, and how she blush'd again, As if to close with Cyril's random wish : Not like your Princess cramm'd with erring pride, Nor like poor Psyche whom she drags in tow.' 'The crane,' I said, ' may chatter of the crane, The dove may murmur of the dove, but I Three times more noble than threescore of men, |