The Princess | Page 6

the wild woods
that hung about the town;
Found a still place, and plucked her
likeness out;
Laid it on flowers, and watched it lying bathed
In the
green gleam of dewy-tasselled trees:
What were those fancies?
wherefore break her troth?
Proud looked the lips: but while I
meditated
A wind arose and rushed upon the South,
And shook the
songs, the whispers, and the shrieks
Of the wild woods together; and
a Voice
Went with it, 'Follow, follow, thou shalt win.'
Then, ere the silver sickle of that month
Became her golden shield, I
stole from court
With Cyril and with Florian, unperceived,


Cat-footed through the town and half in dread
To hear my father's
clamour at our backs
With Ho! from some bay-window shake the
night;
But all was quiet: from the bastioned walls
Like threaded
spiders, one by one, we dropt,
And flying reached the frontier: then
we crost
To a livelier land; and so by tilth and grange,
And vines,
and blowing bosks of wilderness,
We gained the mother city thick
with towers,
And in the imperial palace found the king.
His name was Gama; cracked 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 bethrothed. '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 failed.
I would you
had her, Prince, with all my heart,
With my full heart: but there were
widows here,
Two widows, Lady Psyche, Lady Blanche;
They fed
her theories, in and out of place
Maintaining that with equal
husbandry
The woman were an equal to the man.
They harped on
this; with this our banquets rang;
Our dances broke and buzzed 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 mastered ~me~. At last she begged 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 even her brother Arac,
nor the twins
Her brethren, though 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, though nettled that he seemed 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 looked 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, entered an old hostel,
called mine host
To council, plied him with his richest wines,
And
showed the late-writ letters of the king.
He with a long low sibilation, stared
As blank as death in marble;
then exclaimed
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 last--
The 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 looked 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 tilled by women; all the swine were
sows,
And all the dogs'--
But while he jested thus,
A thought flashed through me which I
clothed in act,
Remembering how we three presented Maid
Or
Nymph, or Goddess, at high tide of feast,
In masque or pageant at my

father's court.
We sent mine host to purchase female gear;
He
brought it, and himself, a sight to shake
The midriff of despair with
laughter, holp
To lace us up, till, each, in maiden plumes
We
rustled: him we gave a costly