Dramatic Romances | Page 8

suit, weighing out with
nonchalance
Fine speeches like gold from a balance. 90
Sound the trumpet, no true knight's a tarrier!
De Lorge made one leap
at the barrier,
Walked straight to the glove--while the lion
Ne'er
moved, kept his far-reaching eye on
The palm-tree-edged
desert-spring's sapphire,
And the musky oiled skin of the Kaffir--

Picked it up, and as calmly retreated,
Leaped back where the lady was
seated,
And full in the face of its owner
Flung the glove.
"Your heart's queen, you dethrone her? 100 So should I!"--cried the
King--"'twas mere vanity
Not love set that task to humanity!"
Lords
and ladies alike turned with loathing
>From such a proved wolf in
sheep's clothing.
Not so, I; for I caught an expression
In her brow's undisturbed
self-possession
Amid the Court's scoffing and merriment,
As if
from no pleasing experiment
She rose, yet of pain not much heedful

So long as the process was needful,-- 110 As if she had tried in a
crucible,
To what "speeches like gold" were reducible,
And, finding
the finest prove copper,
Felt the smoke in her face was but proper;

To know what she had not to trust to,
Was worth all the ashes and
dust too.
She went out 'mid hooting and laughter;
Clement Marot
stayed; I followed after,
And asked, as a grace, what it all meant?

If
she wished not the rash deed's recalment? 120 For I"--so I spoke--"am a
poet:
Human nature,--behoves that I know it!"

She told me, "Too long had I heard
Of the deed proved alone by the
word:
For my love--what De Lorge would not dare!
With my
scorn--what De Lorge could compare!
And the endless descriptions
of death
He would brave when my lip formed a breath,
I must
reckon as braved, or, of course,
Doubt his word--and moreover,
perforce, 130 For such gifts as no lady could spurn,
Must offer my
love in return.
When I looked on your lion, it brought
All the
dangers at once to my thought,
Encountered by all sorts of men,

Before he was lodged in his den--
>From the poor slave whose club
or bare hands
Dug the trap, set the snare on the sands,
With no King
and no Court to applaud,
By no shame, should he shrink, overawed,
140 Yet to capture the creature made shift,
That his rude boys might
laugh at the gift
--To the page who last leaped o'er the fence
Of the
pit, on no greater pretence
Than to get back the bonnet he dropped,

Lest his pay for a week should be stopped.
So, wiser I judged it to
make
One trial what 'death for my sake'
Really meant, while the
power was yet mine,
Than to wait until time should define 150 Such a phrase not so simply
as I,
Who took it to mean just 'to die.'
The blow a glove gives is but
weak:
Does the mark yet discolour my cheek?
But when the heart
suffers a blow,
Will the pain pass so soon, do you know?"
I looked, as away she was sweeping.
And saw a youth eagerly
keeping
As close as he dared to the doorway.
No doubt that a noble
should more weigh 160 His life than befits a plebeian;
And yet, had
our brute been Nemean--
(I judge by a certain calm fervour
The
youth stepped with, forward to serve her)
--He'd have scarce thought
you did him the worst turn
If you whispered "Friend, what you'd get,
first earn!"

And when, shortly after, she carried
Her shame from the
Court, and they married,
To that marriage some happiness, maugre

The voice of the Court, I dared augur. 170
For De Lorge, he made women with men vie,
Those in wonder and

praise, these in envy;
And in short stood so plain a head taller.
That
he wooed and won . . . how do you call her?
The beauty, that rose in
the sequel
To the King's love, who loved her a week well.
And
'twas noticed he never would honour
De Lorge (who looked daggers
upon her)
With the easy commission of stretching
His legs in the
service, and fetching 180 His wife, from her chamber, those straying

Sad gloves she was always mislaying,
While the King took the closet
to chat in,--
But of course this adventure came pat in.
And never the
King told the story,
How bringing a glove brought such glory,
But
the wife smiled--"His nerves are grown firmer:
Mine he brings now
and utters no murmur."
Venienti occurrite morbo!
With which moral I drop my theorbo. 190
NOTES:
"The Glove" gives a transcript from Court life, in Paris,

under Francis I. In making Ronsard the mouthpiece for
a deeper
observation of the meaning of the incident he is
supposed to witness
and describe than Marot and the rest
saw, characteristic differences
between these two poets of
the time are brought out, the genuineness
of courtly love
and chivalry is tested, and to the original story of the
glove is added a new view of the lady's character; a sketch of
her
humbler and truer lover, and their happiness; and a
pendent scene
showing the courtier De Lorges, having
won a beauty for his wife, in
the ignominious position of
assisting the king to enjoy her favors and
of submitting to pleasantries upon his discomfiture. The