"We are beside thee in all thy ways, "With our blame, with our praise, "Glad, angry-but indifferent, no! "For the good of us all, where the haters meet "In the crowded city's horrible street; "Or thou step alone through the morass "Where never sound yet was "Save the dry quick clap of the stork's bill, "So at the last shall come old age, Decrepit as befits that stage; "How else wouldst thou retire apart "With the hoarded memories of thy heart, "And gather all to the very least "Of the fragments of life's earlier feast, "Let fall through eagerness to find "The crowning dainties yet behind? "Ponder on the entire past "Laid together thus at last, "When the twilight helps to fuse "The first fresh with the faded hues, "And the outline of the whole, "As round eve's shades their framework roll, "And then as, 'mid the dark, a gleam "Of yet another morning breaks, "And like the hand which ends a dream, Death, with the might of his sunbeam, "Touches the flesh and the soul awakes, "Then-" Ay, then indeed something would happen! But what? For here her voice changed like a bird's; There grew more of the music and less of the words; Had Jacynth only been by me to clap pen To paper and put you down every syllable With those clever clerkly fingers, All I've forgotten as well as what lingers In this old brain of mine that 's but ill able To give you even this poor version Of the speech I spoil, as it were, with stammering! Of prosody into me and syntax, And did it, not with hobnails but tintacks! Just, do you mark, when the song was sweetest, The peace most deep and the charm completest, And the charm vanished! And my sense returned, so strangely banished, I knew the crone was bewitching my lady, When the door opened, and more than mortal The Duchess I stopped as if struck by palsy. And that I had nothing to do, for the rest, And the brow's height and the breast's expanding, And I was hers to live or to die. As for finding what she wanted, You know God Almighty granted Such little signs should serve wild creatures So that each knows what his friend requires, Followed silent and alone; I spoke to her, but she merely jabbered Crossed the court with nobody heeding; I remember patting while it carried her, And knew the poor devil so much beneath her To dance on hot ploughshares like a Turk dervise, But, unable to pay proper duty where owing it, Was reduced to that pitiful method of showing it. For though, the moment I began setting His saddle on my own nag of Berold's begetting, (Not that I meant to be obtrusive) She stopped me, while his rug was shifting, And, with a gesture kind but conclusive, And a little shake of the head, refused me,— I say, although she never used me, Yet when she was mounted, the Gipsy behind her And I ventured to remind her, I suppose with a voice of less steadiness Than usual, for my feeling exceeded me, -Something to the effect that I was in readiness Whenever God should please she needed me,Then, do you know, her face looked down on me With a look that placed a crown on me, And she felt in her bosom,-mark, her bosom— And, as a flower-tree drops its blossom, Dropped me ah, had it been a purse Of silver, my friend, or gold that 's worse, So understood,—that a true heart so may gain Such as friends in a convent make To wear, each for the other's sake,— And ever shall, till the Day of Judgment. And then, and then,-to cut short, this is idle, XVI. When the liquor 's out why clink the cannikin? When she heard, what she called the flight of the feloness What they said and did with the lady away! And to dance on, when we 've lost the music, It ought to have stopped; there seemed nothing to do more. But the world thought otherwise and went on, And my head 's one that its spite was spent on : Thirty years are fled since that morning, And with them all my head's adorning. Not suffered to empty its poison-bladder : |