The Duke stepped rather aside than forward, As if her first hair had grown grey; For such things must begin some one day. VII In a day or two she was well again ; As who should say, "You labour in vain! "This is all a jest against God, who meant "I should ever be, as I am, content "And glad in his sight; therefore, glad I will be." So, smiling as at first went she. VIII She was active, stirring, all fire— Could not rest, could not tire— To a stone she might have given life! (I myself loved once, in my day) -For a shepherd's, miner's, huntsman's wife, (I had a wife, I know what I say) There was already this man in his post, To sit thus, stand thus, see and be seen, And it was amusing enough, each infraction And, being a fool, instruct the wise, And, child-like, parcel out praise or blame. As though an artificer, after contriving A wheel-work image as if it were living, Should find with delight it could motion to strike him So found the Duke, and his mother like him : The lady hardly got a rebuff— That had not been contemptuous enough, With his cursed smirk, as he nodded applause, IX So, the little lady grew silent and thin, As the way is with a hid chagrin ; And the Duke perceived that she was ailing, And said in his heart, ""T is done to spite me, "But I shall find in my power to right me!" Don't swear, friend! The old one, many a year, Is in hell, and the Duke's self . . X you shall hear. 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, And another and another, and faster and faster, In resolving on a hunting-party. Always provided, old books showed the way of it! As on each case, exactly stated To encourage your dog, now, the properest chirrup, Blessed was he whose back ached with the jerkin Blesseder he who nobly sunk "ohs" And "ahs" while he tugged on his grandsire's trunk-hose; Each slouching before and behind like the scallop, Loaded with lacquer and looped with crimson? So that the deer now, to make a short rhyme on 't, XI Now you must know that when the first dizziness "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, By the announcement with proper unction "When horns wind a mort and the deer is at siege, "Let the dame of the castle prick forth on her jennet, If she clung to the perch, as to take it in dudgeon? Just a day before, as he judged most dignified, 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, 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 pieballed, Black-barred, cream-coated and pink eye-balled,— And when she persisted nevertheless,- Well, I suppose here's the time to confess A balcony none of the hardest to clamber; And that Jacynth the tire-woman, ready in waiting, And since Jacynth was like a June rose, why, a fervent And if she had the habit to peep through the casement, And so, as I say, on the lady's persistence, 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, What meant she?-Who was she?-Her duty and station. Its decent regard and its fitting relation— In brief, my friends, 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; |