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 chanc'd that I had been,
While life was yet in bud and blade, betroth'd
To one, a neighboring 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.
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.
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; lov'd to live alone
Among her women; certain, would not we...
That morning in the presence room I stood
With Cyril and with Florian, my two friends;
The first, a gentleman of broken means
(His father's fault) but given to starts and bursts
Of revel; and the last, my other heart,
And almost my half-self, for still we mov'd
Together, twinn'd as horse's ear and eye.
Now, while they spake, I saw my father's face Grow long and troubled like a rising moon, Inflamed with wrath. He started on his feet, Tore the king's letter, snow'd it down, and rent The wonder of the loom thro' warp and woof From skirt to skirt; and at the last he sware That he would send a hundred thousand men, And bring her in a whirlwind. Then he chew'd
The thrice-turn'd cud of wrath, and cook'd his spleen, 65 Communing with his captains of the war.
At last I spoke: 'My father, let me go.
It cannot be but some gross error lies
In this report, this answer of a king,
Whom all men rate as kind and hospitable.
Or, maybe, I myself, my bride once seen,
Whate'er my grief to find her less than fame,
May rue the bargain made.' And Florian said:
'I have a sister at the foreign court
Who moves about the Princess; she, you know,
Who wedded with a nobleman from thence.
He, dying lately, left her, as I hear,
The lady of three castles in that land.
Thro' her this matter might be sifted clean.'
And Cyril whisper'd, 'Take me with you too.'
Then laughing, 'What, if these weird seizures come
Upon you in those lands, and no one near
To point you out the shadow from the truth!
Take me. I'll serve you better in a strait;
I grate on rusty hinges here.' But 'No!'
Roar'd the rough king, 'you shall not! We ourself
Will crush her pretty maiden fancies dead
In iron gauntlets. Break the council up.'
But when the council broke, I rose and pass'd
Thro' the wild woods that hung about the town;
Found a still place, and pluck'd her likeness out;
Laid it on flowers, and watch'd it lying bathed
In the green gleam of dewy-tassell'd trees.
What were those fancies ? Wherefore break her troth? Proud look'd the lips. But while I meditated,
A wind arose and rush'd upon the South,
And shook the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks
Of the wild woods together; and a Voice
Went with it, 'Follow, follow, thou shalt win.'
Then, ere the silver sickle of that month
Became her golden shield, I stole from court
With Cyril and with Florian, unperceiv'd,
Cat-footed thro' the town and half in dread
To hear my father's clamor at our backs
With 'Ho!' from some bay-window shake the night. 105
But all was quiet. From the bastion'd walls,
Like threaded spiders, one by one, we dropp'd
And flying reach'd the frontier. Then we cross'd
To a livelier land; and so by tilth and grange,
And vines, and blowing bosks of wilderness,
We gain'd the mother-city thick with towers,
And in the imperial palace found the king.
His name was Gama: crack'd and small his voice, But bland the smile that like a wrinkling wind
On glassy water drove his cheek in lines;
A little dry old man, without a star,
Not like a king. Three days he feasted us,
And on the fourth I spake of why we came,
And my betroth'd.
'You do us, Prince,' he said,
We remember love ourselves
In our sweet youth. There did a compact pass,
Long summers back, a kind of ceremony,-
I think the year in which our olives fail'd.
I would you had her, Prince, with all my heart,
With my full heart. But there were widows here,
Two widows, Lady Psyche, Lady Blanche.
They fed her theories, in and out of place
Maintaining that with equal husbandry
The woman were an equal to the man.
They harp'd on this; with this our banquets rang;
Our dances broke and buzz'd in knots of talk;
Nothing but this: my very ears were hot
Knowledge, so my daughter held,
They had but been, she thought,
To hear them.
Was all in all.
As children; they must lose the child, assume
The woman. Then, Sir, awful odes she wrote,
Too awful, sure, for what they treated of,—
But all she is and does is awful; odes
About this losing of the child; and rhymes
And dismal lyrics, prophesying change
Beyond all reason. These the women sang;
And they that know such things-I sought but peace;
No critic I-would call them masterpieces.
They master'd me. At last she begg'd a boon,
A certain summer-palace which I have
Hard by your father's frontier.
Yet being an easy man, gave it;
All wild to found a University
For maidens, on the spur she fled.
We know not,-only this: they see no men,
Not even her brother Arac, nor the twins
Her brethren, tho' they love her, look upon her
As on a kind of paragon. And I
(Pardon me saying it) were much loth to breed
Dispute betwixt myself and mine. But since
(And I confess with right) you think me bound
In some sort, I can give you letters to her;
And yet, to speak the truth, I rate your chance
Almost at naked nothing.'
And I, tho' nettled that he seem'd to slur
With garrulous ease and oily courtesies
Our formal compact, yet, not less (all frets
But chafing me on fire to find my bride)
Went forth again with both my friends.
Many a long league back to the North.
From hills, that look'd across a land of hope,
We dropp'd with evening on a rustic town
Set in a gleaming river's crescent-curve,
Close at the boundary of the liberties;
There, enter'd an old 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.
She once had pass'd that way; he heard her speak.
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