Sweet and low, sweet and low, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea! Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon, and blow, Blow him again to me; While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, Father will come to thee soon; Rest, rest, on mother's breast, Father will come to thee soon; Father will come to his babe in the nest, Silver sails all out of the west Under the silver moon : Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep. III. MORN in the white wake of the morning star We rose, and each by other drest with care There while we stood beside the fount, and watch'd Or seem'd to watch the dancing bubble, approach'd Melissa, tinged with wan from lack of sleep, Or grief, and glowing round her dewy eyes And fly' she cried, 'O fly, while yet you may! My mother knows :' and when I ask'd her 'how' '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, And so it was agreed when first they came; 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 Began to burn and burn, and her lynx eye To fix and make me hotter, till she laugh'd: "O marvellously modest maiden, you! Men! girls, like men! why, if they had been men You need not set your thoughts in rubric thus For wholesale comment." Pardon, I am shamed That I must needs repeat for my excuse What looks so little graceful: "men" (for still My mother went revolving on the word) "And so they are,—very like men indeed— And with that woman closeted for hours!" Then came these dreadful words out one by one, "I shudder'd: "and you "Why-these-are—men : know it." "O ask me nothing," I said: "And she knows too, And she conceals it." So my mother clutch'd The truth at once, but with no word from me; And now thus early risen she goes to inform '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 In scorn of us, "they mounted, Ganymedes, 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; 'tis my mother, Pent in a crevice: much I bear with her : I never knew my father, but she says (God help 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 heart |