III. MORN in the white wake of the morning star We rose, and each by other drest with care In shadow, but the Muses' heads were touch'd There 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 grief, 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 when I ask'd her 'how' 'My fault' she wept 'my fault! and yet not mine; Yet mine in part. O hear me, pardon me. My mother, 'tis her wont from night to night To rail at Lady Psyche and her side. She says the Princess should have been the Head, And so it was agreed when first they came; 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 You need not set your thoughts in rubric thus For wholesale comment." Pardon, I am shamed That I must needs repeat for my excuse What looks so little graceful: "men" (for still My mother went revolving on the word) “And so they are,—very like men indeed And with that woman closeted for hours!" Then came these dreadful words out one by one, “Why-these-are-men :” I shudder'd: "and you know it." "O ask me nothing," I said: "And she knows too, The truth at once, but with no word from me ; '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.” To yield us farther furlough :' and he went. Melissa shook her doubtful curls, and thought He scarce would prosper. 'Tell us,' Florian ask'd, 'How grew this feud betwixt the right and left." 'O long ago,' she said, 'betwixt these two Division smoulders hidden; 'tis my mother, Too jealous, often fretful as the wind Pent in a crevice: much I bear with her : I never knew my father, but she says (God help her) she was wedded to a fool; And still she rail'd against the state of things. She had the care of Lady Ida's youth, And from the Queen's decease she brought her up. But when your sister came she won the heart Of Ida: they were still together, grew And angled with them for her pupil's love : Then murmur'd Florian gazing after her. 'An open-hearted maiden, true and pure. If I could love, why this were she : how pretty Her blushing was, and how she blush'd again, As if to close with Cyril's random wish : Not like your Princess cramm'd with erring pride, Nor like poor Psyche whom she drags in tow.' 'The crane,' I said, 'may chatter of the crane, The dove may murmur of the dove, but I |