For while our cloisters echo'd frosty feet,

And our long walks were stript as bare as brooms,

We did but talk you over, pledge you all

In wassail; often, like as many girls

Sick for the hollies and the yews of home

As many little trifling Lilias-play'd

Charades and riddles as at Christmas here,

And what's my thought and when and where and how,

And often told a tale from mouth to mouth

As here at Christmas.'

She remember'd that:

A pleasant game, she thought: she liked it more

Than magic music, forfeits, all the rest.

But these what kind of tales did men tell men,

She wonder'd, by themselves?

A half-disdain

Perch'd on the pouted blossom of her lips:
And Walter nodded at me ; 'He began,

The rest would follow, each in turn; and so

We forged a sevenfold story. Kind? what kind?

Chimeras, crotchets, Christmas solecisms,

Seven-headed monsters only made to kill

Time by the fire in winter.

'Kill him now,

The tyrant! kill him in the summer too,'

Said Lilia; Why not now,' the maiden Aunt.

'Why not a summer's as a winter's tale?

A tale for summer as befits the time,

And something it should be to suit the place,

Heroic, for a hero lies beneath,

Grave, solemn !'

Walter warp'd his mouth at this

To something so mock-solemn, that I laugh'd

And Lilia woke with sudden-shrilling mirth

An echo like a ghostly woodpecker,

Hid in the ruins; till the maiden Aunt

(A little sense of wrong had touch'd her face

With colour) turn'd to me with As you will;

Heroic if you will, or what you will,

Or be yourself your hero if you will.'

Take Lilia, then, for heroine' clamour'd he,

And make her some great Princess, six feet high,

Grand, epic, homicidal; and be you

For while our cloisters echo'd frosty feet,

And our long walks were stript as bare as brooms,

We did but talk you over, pledge you all

In wassail; often, like as many girls

Sick for the hollies and the yews of home

As many little trifling Lilias-play'd

Charades and riddles as at Christmas here,

And what's my thought and when and where and how,

And often told a tale from mouth to mouth

As here at Christmas.'

She remember'd that:

A pleasant game, she thought: she liked it more

Than magic music, forfeits, all the rest.

But these what kind of tales did men tell men,

She wonder'd, by themselves?

A half-disdain

Perch'd on the pouted blossom of her lips:

And Walter nodded at me; He began,

The rest would follow, each in turn; and so

We forged a sevenfold story. Kind? what kind?

Chimeras, crotchets, Christmas solecisms,

Seven-headed monsters only made to kill

I.

A PRINCE I was, blue-eyed, and fair in face,
Of temper amorous, as the first of May,
With lengths of yellow ringlet, like a girl,
For on my cradle shone the Northern star.

There lived an ancient legend in our house. Some sorcerer, whom a far-off grandsire burnt Because he cast no shadow, had foretold, Dying, that none of all our blood should know The shadow from the substance, and that one Should come to fight with shadows and to fall. For so, my mother said, the story ran.

And, truly, waking dreams were, more or less,

An old and strange affection of the house.

Myself too had weird seizures, Heaven knows what:

On a sudden in the midst of men and day,

And while I walk'd and talk'd as heretofore,
I seem'd to move among a world of ghosts,
And feel myself the shadow of a dream.

Our great court-Galen poised his gilt-head cane,
And paw'd his beard, and mutter'd 'catalepsy.'
My mother pitying made a thousand prayers;
My mother was as mild as any saint,
Half-canonized by all that look'd on her,
So gracious was her tact and tenderness:
But my good father thought a king a king ;
He cared not for the affection of the house;
He held his sceptre like a pedant's wand
To lash offence, and with long arms and hands
Reach'd out, and pick'd offenders from the mass
For judgment.

Now it chanced that I had been, While life was yet in bud and blade, betroth'd To one, a neighbouring Princess: she to me Was proxy-wedded with a bootless calf

At eight years old; and still from time to time Came murmurs of her beauty from the South, And of her brethren, youths of puissance;