f the head, refused me-- 760
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-- 770
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,
Why, you see, as soon as I found myself
So understood,--that a true heart so may gain
Such a reward,--I should have gone home again,
Kissed Jacynth, and soberly drowned myself!
It was a little plait of hair
Such as friends in a convent make
To wear, each for the other's sake-- 780
This, see, which at my breast I wear,
Ever did (rather to Jacynth's grudgment),
And ever shall, till the Day of Judgment.
And then-and then--to cut short--this is idle,
These are feelings it is not good to foster--
I pushed the gate wide, she shook the bridle,
And the palfrey bounded--and so we lost her.

XVI

When the liquor's out why clink the cannikin?
I did think to describe you the panic in
The redoubtable breast of our master the mannikin, 790
And what was the pitch of his mother's yellowness,
How she turned as a shark to snap the spare-rib
Clean off, sailors say, from a pearl-diving Carib,
When she heard, what she called the flight of the feloness
--But it seems such child's play,
What they said and did with the lady away!
And to dance on, when we've lost the music,
Always made me--and no doubt makes you--sick.
Nay, to my mind, the world's face looked so stern
As that sweet form disappeared through the postern, 800
She that kept it in constant good humour,
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.
Nor did the old Duchess die outright,
As you expect, of suppressed spite,
The natu