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,
Or master'd by the sense of sport, begin
To troll a careless, careless tavern-catch
Of Moll and Meg, and strange experiences
Unmeet for ladies. Florian nodded at him,

I frowning; Psyche flush'd and wann'd and shook;
The lilylike Melissa droop'd her brows;

'Forbear,' the Princess cried; 'Forbear, Sir,' I;
And heated thro' and thro' with wrath and love,

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,'
Said Lady Ida; and fled at once, as flies
A troop of snowy doves athwart the dusk,
When some one batters at the dovecote-doors,
Disorderly the women. Alone I stood

With Florian, cursing Cyril, vext at heart,

In the pavilion: there like parting hopes

I heard them passing from me: hoof by hoof,
And every hoof a knell to my desires,

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
To drench his dark locks in the gurgling wave
Mid-channel. Right on this we drove and caught,
And grasping down the boughs I gain'd the shore.

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,
Not yet endured to meet her opening eyes,
Nor found my friends; but push'd alone on foot
(For since her horse was lost I left her mine)
Across the thicket, and less from Indian craft
Than beelike instinct hiveward, found at length
The gates of the garden. Two great statutes, Art
And Science, Caryatids, lifted up

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
Spread out at top, and grimly spiked the gates.

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,
Now poring on the glow-worm, now the star,
I paced the terrace, till the bear had wheel'd

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,
Disturb'd me with the doubt if this were she,'
But it was Florian. 'Hist, O hist,' he said,
'They seek us out so late is out of rules.
Moreover, "seize the strangers," is the cry.

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.
Girl after girl was call'd to trial: each

80

Disclaim'd all knowledge of us: last of all,
Melissa trust me, Sir, I pitied her.

She, question'd if she knew us men, at first
Was silent; closer prest, denied it not :

And then, demanded if her mother knew,

Or Lady Psyche, affirm'd not, or denied:
From whence the Royal mind, familiar with her,
Easily gather'd either guilt. She sent

For Psyche, but she was not there; she call'd
For Psyche's child to cast it from the doors;

She sent for Blanche to accuse her face to face;
And I slipt out but whither will you now?
And where are Psyche, Cyril? both are fled.
What, if together? that were not so well.
Would rather we had never come! I dread
His wildness, and the chances of the dark.'

'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,