She spoke and turn'd her sumptuous head with eyes Of shining expectation fixt on mine. Then while I dragg'd my brains for such a song, Did Cyril with whom the bell-mouth'd flask had wrought, I frowning; Psyche flush'd and wann'd and shook; 'Forbear,' the Princess cried; 'Forbear, Sir,' I; I smote him on the breast; he started up; There rose a shriek as of a city sack'd; Melissa clamour'd, 'Flee the death;'To horse,' With Florian, cursing Cyril, vext at heart, In the pavilion: there like parting hopes I heard them passing from me: hoof by hoof, Clang'd on the bridge; and then another shriek, The Head, the Head, the Princess, O the Head !' For blind with rage she miss'd the plank, and roll'd In the river. Out I sprang from glow to gloom: There whirl'd her white robe like a blossom'd branch Rapt to the horrible fall: a glance I gave, No more; but woman-vested as I was, Plunged; and the flood drew; yet I caught her; then Oaring one arm, and bearing in my left The weight of all the hopes of half the world, Strove to buffet to land in vain. A tree Was half-disrooted from his place, and stoop'd There stood her maidens glimmeringly group'd In the hollow bank. One reaching forward drew My burthen from mine arms, and crying 'she lives,' They bore her back into the tent: but I, So much a kind of shame within me wrought, A weight of emblem, and betwixt were valves Of open metal in which the old hunter rued His rash intrusion, manlike, but his brows Had sprouted, and the branches thereupon A little space was left between the horns, Thro' which I clamber'd o'er at top with pain, Dropt on the sward, and up the linden walks, And, tost on thoughts that changed from hue to hue, Thro' a great arc his seven slow suns. A step Of lightest echo, and then a loftier form. Than female, moving thro' the uncertain gloom, I found the key in the doors: how came you here? Last of the train, a moral leper, I, To whom none spake, half-sick at heart, return'd. Arriving all confused among the rest, With hooded brows I crept into the hall, And, couched behind a Judith, underneath The head of Holofernes peep'd and saw. 80 Disclaim'd all knowledge of us: last of all, She, question'd if she knew us men, at first And then, demanded if her mother knew, Or Lady Psyche, affirm'd not, or denied: For Psyche, but she was not there; she call'd She sent for Blanche to accuse her face to face; 'And yet,' I said, 'you wrong him more than I That struck him: this is proper to the clown, Tho' smock'd, or furr'd and purpled, still the clown, |