Or Nymph, or Goddess, at high tide of feast, To guerdon silence, mounted our good steeds, We rode till midnight when the college lights Began to glitter firefly-like in copse And linden alley; then we past an arch, From four wing'd horses dark against the stars; On silver anvils, and the splash and stir Of fountains spouted up and showering down In meshes of the jasmine and the rose: 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 entry: riding in, we call'd ; A plump-arm'd Ostleress and a stable wench In laurel her we ask'd of that and this, 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: The seal was Cupid bent above a scroll, And over him Uranian Venus hung, And raised the blinding bandage from his eyes : I gave the letter 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. As thro' the land at eve we went, We fell out, my wife and I, And kiss'd again with tears: And blessings on the falling-out When we fall out with those we love, For when we came where lies the child We lost in other years, There above the little grave, We kiss'd again with tears. 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 Compact of lucid marbles, boss'd with lengths |