"Quite low born! self-educated! somewhat gifted though by

nature, And we make a point by asking him, of being very kind;You may speak, he does not hear you; and besides, he writes no satire,

All these serpents kept by charmers, leave their natural sting behind."

I grew scornfuller, grew colder, as I stood up there among them, Till, as frost intense will burn you, the cold scorning scorched my brow;

When a sudden silver speaking, gravely cadenced, overrung them,

And a sudden silken stirring touched my inner nature through.

I looked upward and beheld her! With a calm and regnant spirit,

Slowly round she swept her eye

lids, and said clear before them all,

"Have you such superfluous honor, sir, that able to confer it, You will come down, Mr. Bertram, as my guest to Wycombe

Hall?"

Here she paused, she had been paler at the first word of her speaking; But because a silence followed it, blushed somewhat as for

shame;

Then, as scorning her own feeling, resumed calmly—“I am seeking

More distinction than these gentlemen think worthy of my claim.

"Nevertheless, you see, I seek itnot because I am a woman," (Here her smile sprang like a fountain, and, so overflowed her mouth,)

"But because my woods in Sussex have some purple shades at gloaming

Which are worthy of a king in state, or poet in his youth.

In that ancient hall of Wycombe, thronged the numerous guests invited,

And the lovely London ladies trod the floors with gliding feet; And their voices low with fashion, not with feeling, softly freighted All the air about the windows, with elastic laughters sweet.

For at eve, the open windows flung their light out on the terrace, Which the floating orbs of curtains

did with gradual shadow sweep: While the swans upon the river, fed at morning by the heiress, Trembled downward through their snowy wings at music in their sleep.

And there evermore was music, both of instrument and singing; Till the finches of the shrubberies grew restless in the dark;

And your nobles wear their ermine

on the outside, or walk blackly In the presence of the social law, as most ignoble men.

"Let the poets dream such dreaming! Madam, in these British Islands,

'Tis the substance that wanes ever, 'tis the symbol that exceeds; Soon we shall have nought but symbol! and for statues like this Silence,

Shall accept the rose's image, - in

another case, the weed's."

"Not so quickly!" she retorted,

"I confess where'er you go, you Find for things, names; - shows for actions, and pure gold for honor clear; But when all is run to symbol in the Social, I will throw you The world's book which now reads dryly, and sit down with Silence here."

Half in playfulness she spoke, I thought, and half in indignation:

Friends who listened laughed her words off while her lovers deemed her fair;

A fair woman-flushed with feeling, in her noble-lighted station Near the statue's white reposing.

and both bathed in sunny air!

And thus, morning after morning, spite of vows and spite of sor

row,

Did I follow at her drawing, while the week-days passed along; Just to feed the swans this noontide, or to see the fawns to-morrow, Or to teach the hill-side echo some sweet Tuscan in a song.

Ay, for sometimes on the hill-side, while we sat down in the gowans,

With the forest green behind us, and its shadow cast before; And the river running under; and across it from the rowans A brown partridge whirring near us, till we felt the air it bore,

And she spake such good thoughts natural. as if she always thought them, And had sympathies so rapid, open, free as bird on branch, Just as ready to fly east as west, whichever way besought them, In the birchen wood a chirrup, or a cock-crow in the grange.

In her utmost rightness there is truth, - and often she speaks lightly, Has a grace in being gay, which even mournful souls approve, For the root of some grave earnest thought is under-struck rightly,

SO

As to justify the foliage and the waving flowers above.

And she talked on, we talked, rath

er! upon all things - substance-shadowOf the sheep that browsed the grasses, of the reapers in the

corn,

Of the little children from the schools, seen winding through the meadow,

Of the poor rich world beyond them, still kept poorer by its scorn.

As I loved pure inspirations, -— loved the graces, loved the virtues, In a Love content with writing his own name on desert sands.

Or at least I thought so purely!thought no idiot Hope was raising

Any crown to crown Love's silence,silent Love that sat alone, Out, alas! the stag is like me, - he, that tries to go on grazing With the great deep gun-wound in his neck, then reels with sudden moan.

It was thus I reeled! I told you that her hand had many suitors – But she smiles them down imperial

ly, as Venus did the waves; — And with such a gracious coldness, that they cannot press their futures

On the present of her courtesy, which yieldingly enslaves.

And this morning, as I sat alone within the inner chamber, With the great saloon beyond it lost in pleasant thought serene, For I had been reading Camoens

that poem you remember, Which his lady's eyes are praised in,

as the sweetest ever seen;

And the book lay open, and my thought flew from it, taking from it

A vibration and impulsion to an end beyond its own,

As the branch of a green osier, when a child would overcome it, Springs up freely from his clasping and goes swinging in the sun.

As I mused I heard a murmur,

- it grew deep as it grew longerSpeakers using earnest language,

"Lady Geraldine, you would! And I heard a voice that pleaded

ever on, in accents stronger, As a sense of reason gave it power to make its rhetoric good.

Well I knew that voice, it was an earl's, of soul that matched his station

Soul completed into lordship,.-might and right read on his brow:

And be cautious lest the common air should injure or distrain.

For the rest, accomplished, upright,ay, and standing by his order With a bearing not ungraceful; fond of art, and letters too; Just a good man made a proud man, as the sandy rocks that border A wild coast, by circumstances, in a regnant ebb and flow.

Thus I knew that voice,-I heard it and I could not help the hearkening:

In the room I stood up blindly, and my burning heart within Seemed to seethe and fuse my senses, till they ran on all sides dark