Among the columns, pacing staid and still
By twos and threes, till all from end to end

With beauties every shade of brown and fair,
In colours gayer than the morning mist,
The long hall glitter'd like a bed of flowers.
How might a man not wander from his wits

Pierced thro' with eyes, but that I kept mine own
Intent upon the Princess, where she sat

Among her grave Professors, scattering gems
Of Art and Science: only Lady Blanche,
A double-rouged and treble-wrinkled Dame,
With all her faded Autumns falsely brown,
Shot sidelong daggers at us, a tiger-cat
In act to spring. At last a solemn grace
Concluded, and we sought the gardens: there

One walk'd reciting by herself, and one

In this hand held a volume as to read,

And smoothed a petted peacock down with that:

Some to a low song oar'd a shallop by,

Or under arches of the marble bridge

Hung, shadow'd from the heat: some hid and sought

In the orange thickets: others tost a ball

Above the fountain-jets, and back again

With laughter: others lay about the lawns,

Of the older sort, and murmur'd that their May
Was passing what was learning unto them?

They wish'd to marry; they could rule a house;
Men hated learned women and to us came
Melissa, hitting all we saw with shafts

Of gentle satire, kin to charity,

That harm'd not so we sat; and now when day
Droop'd, and the chapel tinkled, mixt with those
Six hundred maidens clad in purest white,
Before two streams of light from wall to wall,
While the great organ almost burst his pipes,
Groaning for power, and rolling thro' the court

A long melodious thunder to the sound

Of solemn psalms, and silver litanies,

The work of Ida, to call down from Heaven

A blessing on her labours for the world.

III.

MORN in the white wake of the morning star
Came furrowing all the orient into gold.

We rose, and each by other drest with care
Descended to the court that lay three parts

In shadow, but the Muses' heads were touch'd
Above the darkness from their native East.

And 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 sorrow, and glowing round her dewy eyes
The circled Iris of a night of tears;

'And fly,' she cried, 'O fly, while yet you may!
My mother knows:' and we demanding 'how,'
'My fault,' she wept, 'my fault! and yet not mine;
Yet mine in part. O hear me, pardon me.

My mother, 't is her wont from night to night

To rail at Lady Psyche and her side.

She says the Princess should have been the Head,
Herself and Lady Psyche the two arms;

And so it was agreed when first they came;
But Lady Psyche was the right hand now,
And she the left, or not, or seldom used;
Hers more than half the students, all the love.

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,
And in their fulsome fashion woo'd you, child,

You need not take so deep a rouge: like men—

And closeted with her for hours. Aha!"

Then came these dreadful words out one by one,

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
The Princess Lady Psyche will be crush'd;
But you may yet be saved, and therefore fly :
But heal me with your pardon ere you go.'

'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 tumble, Vulcans, on the second morn."