Many a long league back to the North, we came,

When the first fern-owl whirr'd about the copse,

Upon a little town within a wood

Close at the boundary of the liberties;

There entering in an hostel call'd mine host

To council, plied him with his richest wines,
And show'd the late-writ letters of the king.

He, with a long low sibilation, stared
As blank as death in marble; then exclaim'd
Averring it was clear against all rules

For any man to go: but as his brain
Began to mellow, 'If the king,' he said,

'Had given us letters, was he bound to speak?

The king would bear him out;' and at the last
The summer of the vine in all his veins

'No doubt that we might make it worth his while.
For him, he reverenced his liege-lady there;
He always made a point to post with mares;
His daughter and the housemaid were the boys.

The land he understoood for miles about

Was till'd by women; all the swine were sows,

And all the dogs'

But while he jested thus,

A thought flash'd thro' me which I cloth'd in act,
Remembering how we three presented Maid

Or Nymph, or Goddess, at high tide of feast,
In masque or pageant at my father's court.

We sent mine host to purchase female gear ;
Which brought and clapt upon us, we tweezer'd out

What slender blossom lived on lip or cheek

Of manhood, gave mine host a costly bribe

To guerdon silence, mounted our good steeds,
And boldly ventured on the liberties.

We rode till midnight, when the college lights Began to glitter firefly-like in copse

And linden alley; and then we past an arch

Inscribed too dark for legible, and gain'd

A little street half garden and half house;

But could not hear each other speak for noise

Of clocks and chimes, like silver hammers falling

On silver anvils, and the splash and stir

Of fountains spouted up and showering down

In meshes of the jasmine and the rose:
And all about us peal'd the nightingale,

Rapt in her song, and careless of the snare.

There stood a bust of Pallas for a sign,

By two sphere lamps blazon'd like Heaven and Earth
With constellation and with continent,

Above an archway: riding in, we call'd;
A plump-arm'd Ostleress and a stable wench
Came running at the call, and help'd us down.
Then stept a buxom hostess forth, and sail'd
Full-blown before us into rooms which gave
Upon a pillar'd porch, the bases lost

In laurel her we ask'd of that and this,

And who were tutors. 'Lady Blanche,' she said,

'And Lady Psyche.' 'Which was prettiest,

Best natured?' 'Lady Psyche.' 'Her pupils we,' One voice, we cried; and I sat down and wrote,

In such a hand as when a field of corn

Bows all its ears before the roaring East;

'Three ladies of the Northern empire pray

Your Highness would enroll them with your own, As Lady Psyche's pupils.'

This I seal'd

(A Cupid reading) to be sent with dawn;
And then to bed, where half in doze I seem'd
To float about a glimmering night, and watch
A full sea glazed with muffled moonlight, swell
On some dark shore just seen that it was rich.

II.

AT break of day the College Portress came:

She brought us Academic silks, in hue

The lilac, with a silken hood to each,

And zoned with gold; and now when these were on,

And we as rich as moths from dusk cocoons,

She, curtseying her obeisance, let us know

The Princess Ida waited out we paced,

I first, and following thro' the porch that sang
All round with laurel, issued in a court

Compact of lucid marbles, boss'd with lengths
Of classic frieze, with ample awnings gay
Betwixt the pillars, and with great urns of flowers.
The Muses and the Graces, group'd in threes,

Enring'd a billowing fountain in the midst;

And here and there on lattice edges lay