To hear my father's clamour at our backs

With Ho! from some bay-window shake the night;

But all was quiet from the bastion'd walls

Like threaded spiders, one by one, we dropt,
And flying reach'd the frontier: then we crost
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,

Airing a snowy hand and signet gem,

'All honour. 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,

Two widows, Lady Psyche, Lady Blanche;
They fed her theories, in and out of place

WT GREEN Se.

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

To hear them knowledge, so my daughter held,
Was all in all; they had but been, she thought,
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: I said no,

Yet being an easy man, gave it; and there,

All wild to found an University

For maidens, on the spur she fled; and more

We know not,-only this: they see no men,

Not ev'n 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.'

Thus the king;

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. We rode
Many a long league back to the North. At last
From hills, that look'd across a land of hope,

We dropt 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 lastThe summer of the vine in all his veins

'No doubt that we might make it worth his while.
She once had past that way; he heard her speak ;
She scared him; life! he never saw the like;
She look'd as grand as doomsday and as grave:
And he, he reverenced his liege-lady there;
He always made a point to post with mares;
His daughter and his housemaid were the boys:
The land, he understood, for miles about

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

But while he jested thus,

E