ace
Of ancient hero or modern paladin,
From door to staircase--oh, such a solemn {330}
Unbending of the vertebral column!

--
263. wind a mort: announce that the deer is taken.

273. sealed: more properly spelt `seeled', a term in falconry; Lat.
`cilium', an eyelid; `seel', to close up the eyelids of a hawk, or other
bird (Fr. `ciller les yeux'). "Come, seeling Night, Skarfe vp the
tender Eye of pittiful Day." `Macbeth', III. II. 46.

322. fifty-part canon: "A canon, in music, is a piece wherein the
subject is repeated, in various keys: and being strictly obeyed in the
repetition, becomes the `canon'--the imperative LAW--to what follows.
Fifty of such parts would be indeed a notable peal: to manage three is
enough of an achievement for a good musician."--From Poet's Letter to
the Editor.

12.

However, at sunrise our company mustered;
And here was the huntsman bidding unkennel,
And there 'neath his bonnet the pricker blustered,
With feather dank as a bough of wet fennel;
For the court-yard walls were filled with fog
You might cut as an axe chops a log--
Like so much wool for color and bulkiness;
And out rode the Duke in a perfect sulkiness,
Since, before breakfast, a man feels but queasily, {340}
And a sinking at the lower abdomen
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,
Down in the valley, what should meet him
But a troop of gypsies on their march?
No doubt with the annual gifts to greet him.

13.

Now, in your land, gypsies reach you, only {350}
After reaching all lands beside;
North they go, South they go, trooping or lonely,
And still, as they travel far and wide,
Catch they and keep now a trace here, a trace there,
That puts you in mind of a place here, a place there.
But with us, I believe they rise out of the ground,
And nowhere else, I take it, are found
With the earth-tint yet so freshly embrowned;
Born, no doubt, like insects which breed on
The very fruit they are meant to feed on. {360}
For the earth--not a use to which they don't turn it,
The ore that grows in the mountain's womb,
Or