The Princess; a medley/Canto 1
I.
A prince I was, blue-eyed, and fair in face,With lengths of yellow ringlet, like a girl,For on my cradle shone the Northern star.My mother was as mild as any saint,And nearly canonized by all she knew,So gracious was her tact and tenderness;But my good father thought a king a king;He held his sceptre like a pedant's wandTo lash offence, and with long arms and handsReach'd out, and pick'd offenders from the massFor judgment.Now it chanced that I had been,While life was yet in bud and blade, betroth'dTo one, a neighbouring Princess; she to meWas proxy-wedded with a bootless calfAt eight years old; and still from time to time Came murmurs of her beauty from the South,And of her brethren, knights of puissance;And still I wore her picture by my heart,And one dark tress; and all around them bothSweet thoughts would swarm as bees about their queen.
But when the days drew nigh that I should wed,My father sent ambassadors with fursAnd jewels, gifts, to fetch her: these brought backA present, a great labour of the loom;And therewithal an answer vague as wind:Besides, they saw the king; he took the gifts;He said there was a compact; that was true:But then she had a will; was he to blame?And maiden fancies; loved to live aloneAmong her women; certain, would not wed.
That morning in the presence room I stoodWith Cyril and with Florian, my two friends:The first, a gentleman of broken means (His father's fault) but given to starts and burstsOf revel; and the last, my other heart,My shadow, my half-self, for still we movedTogether, kin as horse's ear and eye.
Now while they spake I saw my father's faceGrow long and troubled like a rising moon,Inflamed with wrath: he started on his feet,Tore the king's letter, snow'd it down, and rentThe wonder of the loom thro' warp and woofFrom skirt to skirt; and at the last he swareThat he would send a hundred thousand men,And bring her in a whirlwind: then he chew'dThe thrice-turn'd cud of wrath, and cook'd his spleenCommuning with his captains of the war.
At last I spoke. 'My father, let me go.It cannot be but some gross error liesIn this report, this answer of a king,Whom all men rate as kind and hospitable: Or, maybe, I myself, my bride once seen,Whate'er my grief to find her less than fame,May rue the bargain made.' And Florian said:'I have a sister at the foreign court,Who moves about the Princess; she, you know,Who wedded with a nobleman from thence:He, dying lately, left her, as I hear,The lady of three castles in that land.Thro' her this matter might be sifted clean.'Then whisper'd Cyril: 'Take me with you too.Trust me, I'll serve you better in a strait;I grate on rusty hinges here;' but 'No!'Replied the king, 'you shall not; I myselfWill crush these pretty maiden fancies deadIn iron gauntlets: break the council up.'
But when the council broke, I rose and pastThro' the wild woods that hung about the town;Found a still place, and pluck'd her likeness out;Laid it on flowers, and watch'd it lying bathed In the green gleam of dewy-tassell'd trees:What were those fancies? wherefore break her troth?Proud look'd the lips: but while I meditatedA wind arose and rush'd upon the South,And shook the songs, the whispers, and the shrieksOf the wild woods together; and a VoiceWent with it 'Follow, follow, thou shalt win.'
Then, ere the silver sickle of that monthBecame her golden shield, I stole from courtWith Cyril and with Florian, unperceived.Down from the bastion'd walls we dropt by night,And flying reach'd the frontier: then we crostTo a livelier land; and so by town and thorpe,And tilth, and blowing bosks of wilderness,We gain'd the mother-city thick with towers,And in the imperial palace found the king.His name was Gama; crack'd and small his voice;A little dry old man, without a star,Not like a king; three days he feasted us, And on the fourth I spake of why we came,And my betroth'd. 'You do us, Prince' he said,Airing a snowy hand and signet gem,'All honour. We remember love ourselvesIn our sweet youth: there did a compact passLong summers back, a kind of ceremony—I think the year in which our olives fail'd.I would you had her, Prince, with all my heart,With my full heart: but there were widows here,Two widows, Lady Psyche, Lady Blanche;They fed her theories, in and out of placeMaintaining that with equal husbandryThe woman were an equal to the man.They harp'd on this; with this our banquets rang;Our dances broke and buzz'd in knots of talk;Nothing but this; my very ears were hotTo hear them. Last, my daughter begg'd a boonA certain summer-palace which I haveHard by your father's frontier: I said no,Yet being an easy man, gave it; and there, All wild to found an UniversityFor maidens, on the spur she fled; and moreWe know not,—have not been; they see no men,Not ev'n her brother Arac, nor the twinsHer brethren, tho' they love her, look upon herAs on a kind of paragon; and I(Pardon me saying it) were much loth to breedDispute betwixt myself and mine; but since{And I confess with right) you think me boundIn some sort, I can give you letters to her;And yet, to speak the truth, I rate your chanceAlmost at naked nothing.'
Thus the king;And I, tho' nettled that he seem'd to slurWith garrulous case and oily courtesiesOur formal compact, yet not less all fretsBut chafing me on fire to find my bride,Set out once more with those two gallant boys;Then pushing onward under sun and stars Many a long league back to the North, we came,When the first forn-owl whirr'd about the copse,Upon a little town within a woodClose at the boundary of the liberties;There entering in an hostel call'd mine hostTo council, plied him with his richest wines,And show'd the late-writ letters of the king.
He, with a long low sibilation, staredAs blank as death in marble; then exclaim'dAverring it was clear against all rulesFor any man to go: but as his brainBegan to mellow, 'If the king,' he said,'Had given us letters, was he bound to speak?The king would bear him out;' and at the last—The summer of the vine in all his veins—'No doubt that we might make it worth his while.For him, he reverenced his liege-lady there;He always made a point to post with mares;His daughter and his housemaid were the boys. The land he understood for miles aboutWas till'd by women; all the swine were sows,And all the dogs'—
But while he jested thus,A thought flash'd thro' me which I clothed in act,Remembering how we three presented MaidOr Nymph, or Goddess, at high tide of feast,In masque or pageant at my father's court.We sent mine host to purchase female gear;Which brought and clapt upon us, we tweezer'd outWhat slender blossom lived on lip or cheekOf manhood, gave mine host a costly bribeTo guerdon silence, mounted our good steeds,And boldly ventured on the liberties.
We rode till midnight when the college lightsBegan to glitter firefly-like in copseAnd linden alley; and then we past an archInscribed too dark for legible, and gain'd A little street half garden and half house;But could not hear each other speak for noiseOf clocks and chimes, like silver hammers fallingOn silver anvils, and the splash and stirOf fountains spouted up and showering downIn meshes of the jasmine and the rose:And all about us peal'd the nightingale,Rapt in her song, and careless of the snare.
There stood a bust of Pallas for a sign,By two sphere lamps blazon'd like Heaven and EarthWith constellation and with continent,Above an archway: riding in, we call'd;A plump-arm'd Ostleress and a stable wenchCame running at the call, and help'd us down,Then stept a buxom hostess forth, and sail'dFull-blown before us into rooms which gaveUpon a pillar'd porch, the bases lostIn laurel: her we ask'd of that and this,And who were tutors, 'Lady Blanche' she said, 'And Lady Psyche.' 'Which was prettiestBest natured?' 'Lady Psyche.' 'Her pupils we,'One voice, we cried; and I sat down and wrote,In such a hand as when a field of cornBows all its ears before the roaring East;
'Three ladies of the Northern empire prayYour Highness would enroll them with your own,As Lady Psyche's pupils.'
This I seal'd(A Cupid reading) to be sent with dawn;And then to bed, where half in doze I seem'dTo float about a glimmering night, and watchA full sea glazed with muffled moonlight, swellOn some dark shore just seen that it was rich.