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.'

'I remember that:

A pleasant game,' she said; I liked it more

Than magic music, forfeits, all the rest.

But these what kind of tales do men tell men,

The rest would follow; so we tost the ball:

What kind of tales? why, such as served to kill

Time by the fire in winter.'

'Kill him now!

Tell one,' she said: 'kill him in summer too.'
And tell one,' cried the solemn 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, Grave, moral, solemn, like the mouldering walls About us.'

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 an April woodpecker,

Hid in the ruins; till the maiden aunt

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

With color) turn'd to me: 'Well

as you will

Just as you will,' she said; 'be, if you will,

Yourself your hero.'

'Look then,' added he,

'Since Lilia would be princess, that you stoop

No lower than a prince.'

To which I said,

'Take care then that my tale be follow'd out

By all the lieges in my royal vein :

But one that really suited time and place

Were such a medley, we should have him back

Who told the Winter's Tale to do it for us :

A Gothic ruin, and a Grecian house,

A talk of college and of ladies' rights,

A feudal knight in silken masquerade,

And there with shrieks and strange experiments, For which the good Sir Ralph had burnt them all, The nineteenth century gambols on the grass.

No matter we will say whatever comes:

Here are we seven if each man take his turn

We make a sevenfold story:' then began.

I.

A PRINCE I was, blue-eyed, and fair in face,
With lengths of yellow ringlet, like a girl,
For on my cradle shone the Northern star.
My mother was as mild as any saint,
And nearly canonized by all she knew,
So gracious was her tact and tenderness:
But my good father thought a king a king;
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, knights of puissance;
And still I wore her picture by my heart,
And one dark tress; and all around them both
Sweet thoughts would swarm as bees about their

queen.

But when the days drew nigh that I should wed, My father sent ambassadors with furs

And jewels, gifts, to fetch her these brought back

A present, a great labor of the loom;

And therewithal an answer vague as wind:
Besides, they saw the king; he took the gifts;
He said there was a compact; that was true:
But then she had a will; was he to blame?
And maiden fancies; loved to live alone
Among her women; certain, would not wed.

That morning in the presence room I stood With Cyril and with Florian, my two friends: The first, a gentleman of broken means