They bore it all in complacent guise, As though an artificer, after contriving A wheel-work image as if it were living, Should find with delight it could motion to strike him! So found the Duke, and his mother like him: The lady hardly got a rebuff That had not been contemptuous enough, IX. So, the little lady grew silent and thin, As the way is with a hid chagrin ; And the Duke perceived that she was ailing, you shall hear. X. Well, early in autumn, at first winter-warning, When the stag had to break with his foot, of a morning, A drinking-hole out of the fresh tender ice, That covered the pond till the sun, in a trice, Loosening it, let out a ripple of gold, `And another and another, and faster and faster, He should do the Middle Age no treason In resolving on a hunting-party. Always provided, old books showed the way of it! As on each case, exactly stated— To encourage your dog, now, the properest chirrup, We of the household took thought and debated. Blessed was he whose back ached with the jerkin His sire was wont to do forest-work in ; Blesseder he who nobly sunk "ohs" And "ahs" while he tugged on his grandsire's trunk-hose ; Each slouching before and behind like the scallop, Loaded with lacquer and looped with crimson? So that the deer now, to make a short rhyme on 't, What with our Venerers, Prickers and Verderers, Might hope for real hunters at length and not murderers, And oh the Duke's tailor, he had a hot time on 't ! XI. Now you must know that when the first dizziness "Had not the Duchess some share in the business?" For out of the mouth of two or three witnesses Did he establish all fit-or-unfitnesses: And, after much laying of heads together, "When horns wind a mort and the deer is at siege, "Let the dame of the castle prick forth on her jennet, "And with water to wash the hands of her liege If she clung to the perch, as to take it in dudgeon? Just a day before, as he judged most dignified, In what a pleasure she was to participate,— And, instead of leaping wide in flashes, Her eyes just lifted their long lashes, As if pressed by fatigue even he could not dissipate, And duly acknowledged the Duke's forethought, But spoke of her health, if her health were worth aught, Of the weight by day and the watch by night, With the towel ready, and the sewer Polishing up his oldest ewer, And the jennet pitched upon, a pieballed, And since Jacynth was like a June rose, why, a fervent And if she had the habit to peep through the casement, How could I keep at any vast distance? And so, as I say, on the lady's persistence, The Duke, dumb stricken with amazement, ` Stood for a while in a sultry smother, And then, with a smile that partook of the awful, To learn what was decorous and lawful; And the mother smelt blood with a cat-like instinct, What meant she?-Who was she?-Her duty and station, The wisdom of age and the folly of youth, at once, In brief, my friends, set all the devils in hell free And turn them out to carouse in a belfry And treat the priests to a fifty-part canon, And then you may guess how that tongue of hers ran on ! Well, somehow or other it ended at last, And, licking her whiskers, out she passed; XII. However, at sunrise our company mustered; Begins the day with indifferent omen. And lo, as he looked around uneasily, The sun ploughed the fog up and drove it asunder, This way and that, from the valley under; And, looking through the court-yard arch, |