g cheek shed down its tender glow,
He taught her many things with earnest care
That he thought fitting a young maid should know,
Told of the good deeds of the worthy dead,
And prayers devout, by faithful martyrs said.

And many psalms he caused her to repeat
And sing them, at his knees reclined the while,
And spoke with her of all things good and meet,
And told the story of her native isle,
Till at the end he made her tears to flow,
Rehearsing of his royal master's woe.

And of the stars he taught her, and their names,
And how the chartless mariner they guide;
Of quivering light that in the zenith flames,
Of monsters in the deep sea caves that hide;
Then changed the theme to fairy records wild,
Enchanted moor, elf dame, or changeling child.

To her the Eastern lands their strangeness spread,
The dark-faced Arab in his long blue gown,
The camel thrusting down a snake-like head
To browse on thorns outside a walled white town.
Where palmy clusters rank by rank upright
Float as in quivering lakes of ribbed light.

And when the ship sat like a broad-winged bird
Becalmed, lo, lions answered in the night
Their fellows, all the hollow dark was stirred
To echo on that tremulous thunder's flight,
Dying in weird faint moans;--till look: the sun
And night, and all the things of night, were done.

And they, toward the waste as morning brake,
Turned, where, in-isled in his green watered land,
The Lybian Zeus lay couched of old, and spake,
Hemmed in with leagues of furrow-faced sand--
Then saw the moon (like Joseph's golden cup
Come back) behind some ruined roof swim up.

But blooming childhood will not always last,
And storms will rise e'en on the tideless sea;
His guardian love took fright, she grew so fast,
And he began to think how sad 'twould be
If he should die, and pirate hordes should get
By sword or shipwreck his fair Margaret.

It was a sudden thought; but he gave way,
For it assailed him with unwonted force;
And, with no more than one short week's delay,
For English shores he shaped the vessel's course;
And ten years absent saw her landed now,
With thirteen summers on her maiden brow.

And so he journeyed with her, far inland,
Down quiet lanes, by hedges gemmed with dew,
Where wonders met her eye on every hand,
And all was beautiful and strange and new--
All, from the forest trees in stately ranks,
To yellow cowslips trembling on the banks.

All new--the long-drawn