X.

Well, early in autumn, at first winter-warning,

When the stag had to break with his foot, of a morning, A drinking-hole out of the fresh tender ice

That covered the pond till the sun, in a trice,

Loosening it, let out a ripple of gold,

And another and another, and faster and faster,
Till, dimpling to blindness, the wide water rolled,
Then it so chanced that the duke our master
Asked himself what were the pleasures in season,
And found, since the calendar bade him be hearty,
He should do the middle age no treason
In resolving on a hunting-party.

Always provided, old books showed the way of it!
What meant old poets by their strictures?
And when old poets had said their say of it,
How taught old painters in their pictures?
We must revert to the proper channels,
Workings in tapestry, paintings on pannels,
And gather up woodcraft's authentic traditions.
Here was food for our various ambitions,

As on each case, exactly stated,

-To encourage your dog, now, the properest chirrup, Or best prayer to St. Hubert on mounting your stirrup

We of the household took thought and debated.
Blessed was he whose back ached with the jerkin

His sire was wont to do forest-work in;

Blesseder he who nobly sunk "ohs"

And "ahs" while he tugged on his grandsire's trunk

hose.

What signified hats if they had no rims on,

Each slouching before and behind like the scallop.
And able to serve at sea for a shallop,

Loaded with lacquer and looped with crimson?

So that the deer now, to make a short rhyme on't, What with our venerers, prickers, and verderers, Might hope for real hunters at length, and not murderers;

And oh, the duke's tailor-he had a hot time on't!

XI.

Now you must know, that when the first dizziness
Of flap-hats and buff-coats and jack-boots subsided,
The duke put this question, "The duke's part
provided,

Had not the duchess some share in the business?"
For out of the mouth of two or three witnesses,

Did he establish all fit-or-unfitnesses.

And, after much laying of heads together,
Somebody's cap got a notable feather
By the announcement with proper unction
That he had discovered the lady's function:
Since ancient authors give this tenet,
"When horns wind a mort and the deer is at siege,
Let the dame of the castle prick forth on her jennet,
And with water to wash the hands of her liege
In a clean ewer with a fair toweling,

Let her preside at the disemboweling."
Now, my friend, if you had so little religion
As to catch a hawk, some falcon-lanner,
And thrust her broad wings like a banner
Into a coop for a vulgar pigeon;

And if day by day, and week by week,
You cut her claws, and sealed her eyes,

And clipped her wings, and tied her beak,
Would it cause you any great surprise
If when you decided to give her an airing
You found she needed a little preparing?

-I say, should you be such a curmudgeon,

If she clung to the perch, as to take it in dudgeon?
Yet when the duke to his lady signified,

Just a day before, as he judged most dignified,
In what a pleasure she was to participate-
And, instead of leaping wide in flashes,

Her eyes just lifted their long lashes,

As if pressed by fatigue even he could not dissipate, And duly acknowledged the duke's forethought,

But spoke of her health, if her health were worth aught,

Of the weight by day and the watch by night,

And much wrong now that used to be right,

So, thanking him, declined the hunting-
Was conduct ever more affronting ?

With all the ceremony settled

With the towel ready, and the sewer

Polishing up his oldest ewer,

And the jennet pitched upon, a piebald,

Black-barred, cream-coated, and pink eye-ball’d—

No wonder if the duke was nettled!

And when she persisted nevertheless——

Well, I suppose here's the time to confess
That there ran half round our lady's chamber
A balcony none of the hardest to clamber;
And that Jacynth the tire-woman, ready in waiting,
Stayed in call outside, what need of relating?
And since Jacynth was like a June rose, why, a fervent
Adorer of Jacynth, of course, was your servant;

And if she had the habit to peep through the casement,

How could I keep at any vast distance?
And so, as I say, on the lady's persistence,
The duke, dumb-stricken with amazement,
Stood for a while in a sultry smother,

And then, with a smile that partook of the awful,
Turned her over to his yellow mother,

To learn what was decorous and lawful;

And the mother smelt blood with a cat-like instinct, As her cheek quick whitened thro' all its quince

tinct.

Oh, but the lady heard the whole truth at once! What meant she?-Who was she?-Her duty and station,

The wisdom of age and the folly of youth, at onceIts decent regard and its fitting relation—

In brief, my friend, set all the devils in hell free

And turn them out to carouse in a belfry

And treat the priests to a fifty-part canon,

And then you may guess how that tongue of hers

ran on!

Well, somehow or other it ended at last ;
And, licking her whiskers, out she passed;
And after her-making (he hoped) a face
Like Emperor Nero or Sultan Saladin,
Stalked the duke's self with the austere grace
Of ancient hero or modern paladin,
From door to staircase-oh, such a solemn
Unbending of the vertebral column!

XII.

However, at sunrise our company mustered:

And here was the huntsman bidding unkennel,

And there 'neath his bonnet the pricker blustered,
With feather dank as a bough of wet fennel;

For the court-yard's four walls were filled with fog
You might cut as an axe chops a log,

Like so much wool for colour and bulkiness.

And out rode the duke in a perfect sulkiness,

Since before breakfast, a man feels but queasily,
And a sinking at the lower abdomen

Begins the day with indifferent omen :
And lo, as he looked around uneasily,

The sun ploughed the fog up and drove it asunder
This way and that from the valley under;
And, looking thro' the court-yard arch,
Down in the valley, what should meet him
But a troop of gipsies on their march,
No doubt with the annual gifts to greet him.

XIII.

Now, in your land, gipsies reach you, only
After reaching all lands beside ;

North they go, south they go, trooping or lonely,

And still, as they travel far and wide,

Catch they and keep now a trace here, a trace there, That puts you in mind of a place here, a place there : But with us, I believe they rise out of the ground,

And nowhere else, I take it, are found

With the earth-tint yet so freshly embrowned;
Born, no doubt, like insects which breed on

The very fruit they are meant to feed on.

For the earth-not a use to which they don't turn it :
The ore that grows in the mountain's womb,
Or the sand in the pits like a honeycomb,
They sift and soften it, bake it and burn it—