or rouseth all his pride,
And looseth his love's caress,--
Yet slowness of heart doth his strength betide
As he looks on her loveliness:--
But again the damsel their love-dream breaks,--
And, self-reproachingly,
The knight his resolve of its fetters shakes,
And his spirit now standeth free.

Then, came the last, absorbing kiss,
True Love can ne'er forego,--
That dreamy plenitude of bliss
Or antepast of woe,--
That seeming child of Heaven, which at its birth
Briefly expires, and proves itself of earth.

The ladye hieth to her couch;--
And when the morn appears,
The changes of her cheek avouch,
Full virginly her fears;--
But her doating father can nought discern
In the hues of the rose and the lily that chase
Each other across her lovely face,--
Save a sweetness that softens his visage stern.

FYTTE THE SECONDE.

Romara's skiff is on the Trent,
And the stream is in its strength,--
For a surge, from its ocean-fountain sent,
Pervades its giant length:[8]
Roars the hoarse heygre[9] in its course,
Lashing the banks with its wrathful force;
And dolefully echoes the wild-fowl's scream,
As the sallows are swept by the whelming stream;
And her callow young are hurled for a meal,
To the gorge of the barbel, the pike, and the eel:
The porpoise[10] heaves 'mid the rolling tide,
And, snorting in mirth, doth merrily ride,--
For he hath forsaken his bed in the sea,
To sup on the salmon, right daintily!

In Romara's breast a tempest raves:
He heeds not the rage of the furrowy waves:
Supremely his hopes and fears are set
On the image of Agnes Plantagenet:[11]
And though from his vision fade Gainsburgh's towers,
And the moon is beclouded, and darkness lours,
Yet the eye of his passion oft pierceth the gloom,
And beholds his Beloved in her virgin bloom--
Kneeling before the holy Rood,--
All clasped her hands,--
Beseeching the saints and angels good
That their watchful bands
Her knight may preserve from a watery tomb!

What deathful scream rends Romara's heart?--
Is it the bittern that, flapping the air,
Doth shriek in madness, and downward dart,
As if from the bosom of Death she would tear
Her perished brood,--or a shroud would have
By their side, in the depths of their river-grave?

Hark! hark! again!--'tis a human cry,
Like the shriek of a man about to