Three days he rode all mad and mute;
And when the sun did pass,

Three nights he supt upon dry fruit,

And slept upon wet grass.

Beneath an oak, whose hundred years
Had formed fit shade for talk or tears,
On the fourth day he lay at noon,
And put his gilt guitar in tune;
When suddenly swept by,

In gold and silver all arrayed,
A most resplendent cavalcade ;
Baron and Beauty, Knave and Knight,
And lips of love, and eyes of light,

All blended dazzlingly.

Ay! all the world that day came out,
With horse and horn, and song and shout;

And belles and bouquets gaily bloomed,
And all were proud, and all perfumed,
And gallants, as the humour rose,
Talked any nonsense that they chose,
And damsels gave the reins for fun
Alike to palfrey and to pun,
It chanced no lady had been thrown,
No heir had cracked his collar-bone,
So pleasure laughed on every cheek,
And nought, save saddles, dreamed of pique.
And brightest of that brilliant train,
With jewelled bit, and gilded rein,
And pommel clothed in gorgeous netting,
And courser daintily curvetting,

Girt round with gallant Cavaliers,
Some deep in love, and some in years,
Half exquisites and half absurds,
All babbling of their beasts and birds,
Quite tired of trumpeting and talking,
The Baroness returned from hawking.

The lady halted; well she might;

For Vidal was so fair,

You would have thought some God of light
Had walked to take the air;
Bare were both his delicate hands,
And the hue on his cheek was high,
As woman's when she understands
Her first fond lover's sigh;
And desolate very, and very dumb,

And rolling his eyes of blue,

And rubbing his forehead, and biting his thumb,

As lyrists and lovers do,

Like Queen Titania's darling pet,

Or Oberon's wickedest elf,

He lay beside a rivulet,

And looked beside himself:

And Belles full blown, and Beaux full drest,
Stood there with smirk and smile,
And many a finger, and many a jest,
Were pointed all the while.

Then Vidal came, and bent his knees
Before the lady there,

And raised his bonnet, that the breeze
Might trifle with his hair;

And said, he was a nameless youth,
Had learned betimes to tell the truth,
Could greet a friend, and grasp a foe,
Could take a jest, and give a blow,
Had no idea of false pretences,
Had lost his father, and his senses,
Was travelling over land and sea,
Armed with guitar and gallantry;
And if her will found aught of pleasure
In trifling soul, and tinkling measure,
He prayed that she would call her own
His every thought, and every tone.

"Bonne grace, good Mary, and sweet St. John!"

That haughty dame did say;

"A goodly quarry I have won, In this our sport to-day!

A precious page is this of mine,

To carve my meat, and pour my wine,
To loose my greyhound's ringing chain,
And hold my palfrey's gaudy rein,
And tell strange tales of moody sprites,
Around the hearth, on winter nights.
Marry! a wilful look, and wild!
But we shall tame the wayward child,
And dress his roving locks demurely,
And tie his jesses on securely."

She took from out her garments' fold
A dazzling gaud of twisted gold;

She raised him from his knee;
The diamond cross she gravely kist,
And twined the links around his wrist
With such fine witchery,

That there he kneeled, and met her glance
In silence and a moveless trance,

And saw no sight, and heard no sound,
And knew himself more firmly bound
Than if a hundred weight of steel
Had fettered him from head to heel!

And from that moment Vidal gave

His childish fancy up,

Became her most peculiar slave,

And wore her scarf, and whipped her knave, And filled her silver cup.

She was a widow: on this earth

It seemed her only task was mirth;
She had no nerves and no sensations,
No troubling friends nor poor relations;
No gnawing grief to feel a care for,
No living soul to breathe a prayer for.
Ten
years ago her lord and master

Had chanced upon a sad disaster;

One night his servants found him lying
Speechless and senseless, dead or dying,
With shivered sword and dabbled crest,
And a small poniard in his breast,
And nothing further to supply
The slightest hint of how or why.
As usual, in such horrid cases,

The men made oath, the maids made faces;
All thought it most immensely funny
The murderer should have left the money,
And showed suspicions in dumb crambo,
And buried him with fear and flambeau.

Clotilda shrieked and swooned, of course,
Grew very ill, and very hoarse,
Put on a veil, put off a rout,

Turned all her cooks and courtiers out,
And lived two years on water-gruel,
And drank no wine, and used no fuel.
At last, when all the world had seen
How very virtuous she had been,
She left her chamber, dried her tears,
Kept open house for Cavaliers,

New furnished all the cob-webbed rooms,
And burned a fortune in perfumes.
She had seen six-and-thirty springs,
And still her blood's warm wanderings
Told tales in every throbbing vein
Of youth's high hope, and passion's reign,
And dreams, from which that lady's heart
Had parted, or had seemed to part.
She had no wiles from cunning France,
Too cold to sing, too tall to dance;
But yet, where'er her footsteps went,
She was the Queen of Merriment,
She called the quickest at the table,
For Courcy's song, or Comine's fable,

Bade Barons quarrel for her glove,
And talked with Squires of ladie-love,

And hawked and hunted in all weathers,
And stood six feet,-including feathers.

Her suitors, men of swords and banners,
Were very guarded in their manners,
And e'en when heated by the jorum
Knew the strict limits of decorum.
Well had Clotilda learned the glance
That checks a lover's first advance;
That brow to her was given
That chills presumption in its birth,
And mars the madness of our mirth,
And wakes the reptile of the earth

From the vision he hath of Heaven.

And yet for Vidal she could find

No word or look that was not kind,

With him she walked in shine or shower,

And quite forgot the dinner hour,

And gazed upon him, till he smiled,

As doth a mother on a child.

Oh! when was dream so purely dreamed!

A mother and a child they seemed:

In warmer guise he loved her not ;

And if, beneath the stars and moon,

He lingered in some lonely spot

To play her fond and favourite tune,

And if he fed her petted mare,

And made acquaintance with her bear,
And kissed her hand whene'er she gave it,

And kneeled him down, sometimes, to crave it, 'Twas partly pride, and partly jest,

And partly 'twas a boyish whim, And that he liked to see the rest

Look angrily on her and him. And that—in short, he was a boy, And doted on his last new toy.