has looked in her disdain.
She was sprung of English nobles, I was born of English peasants;
What was _I_ that I should love her, save for competence to pain?

V.

I was only a poor poet, made for singing at her casement,
As the finches or the thrushes, while she thought of other things.
Oh, she walked so high above me, she appeared to my abasement,
In her lovely silken murmur, like an angel clad in wings!

VI.

Many vassals bow before her as her carriage sweeps their doorways;
She has blest their little children, as a priest or queen were she:
Far too tender, or too cruel far, her smile upon the poor was,
For I thought it was the same smile which she used to smile on _me_.

VII.

She has voters in the Commons, she has lovers in the palace,
And, of all the fair court-ladies, few have jewels half as fine;
Oft the Prince has named her beauty 'twixt the red wine and the
chalice:
Oh, and what was _I_ to love her? my beloved, my Geraldine!

VIII.

Yet I could not choose but love her: I was born to poet-uses,
To love all things set above me, all of good and all of fair.
Nymphs of mountain, not of valley, we are wont to call the Muses;
And in nympholeptic climbing, poets pass from mount to star.

IX.

And because I was a poet, and because the public praised me,
With a critical deduction for the modern writer's fault,
I could sit at rich men's tables,--though the courtesies that raised
me,
Still suggested clear between us the pale spectrum of the salt.

X.

And they praised me in her presence--"Will your book appear this
summer?"
Then returning to each other--"Yes, our plans are for the moors."
Then with whisper dropped behind me--"There he is! the latest comer.
Oh, she only likes his verses! what is over, she endures.

XI.

"Quite low-born, self-educated! somewhat gifted though by nature,
And we make a point of asking him,--of being very kind.
You may speak, he does not hear you! and, besides, he writes no
satire,--
All these serpents kept by charmers leave the natural sting behind."

XII.

I grew scornfuller, grew colder, as I stood up there among them,
Till as frost intense will burn you, the cold scorning scorched my
brow;
When a sudden silver speaking, gravely cadenced, over-rung them,
And a s