Lord Howe came up. ‘What, talking poetry So near the image of the unfavouring Muse? That’s you, Miss Leigh: I’ve watched you half an hour, Precisely as I watched the statue called A Pallas in the Vatican;—you mind The face, Sir Blaise?—intensely calm and sad, As wisdom cut it off from fellowship,— But _that_ spoke louder. Not a word from _you_! And these two gentlemen were bold, I marked, And unabashed by even your silence.’ ‘Ah,’ Said I, ‘my dear Lord Howe, you shall not speak To a printing woman who has lost her place, (The sweet safe corner of the household fire Behind the heads of children) compliments, As if she were a woman. We who have clipt The curls before our eyes, may see at least As plain as men do: speak out, man to man; No compliments, beseech you.’ ‘Friend to friend, Let that be. We are sad to-night, I saw, (—Good night, Sir Blaise! Ah, Smith—he has slipped away) I saw you across the room, and stayed, Miss Leigh, To keep a crowd of lion-hunters off, With faces toward your jungle. There were three; A spacious lady, five feet ten and fat, Who has the devil in her (and there’s room) For walking to and fro upon the earth, From Chipewa to China; she requires Your autograph upon a tinted leaf ’Twixt Queen Pomare’s and Emperor Soulouque’s; Pray give it; she has energies, though fat: For me, I’d rather see a rick on fire Than such a woman angry. Then a youth Fresh from the backwoods, green as the underboughs, Asks modestly, Miss Leigh, to kiss your shoe, And adds, he has an epic, in twelve parts, Which when you’ve read, you’ll do it for his boot,— All which I saved you, and absorb next week Both manuscript and man,—because a lord Is still more potent than a poetess, With any extreme republican. Ah, ah, You smile at last, then.’ ‘Thank you.’ ‘Leave the smile, I’ll lose the thanks for ’t,—ay, and throw you in My transatlantic girl, with golden eyes, That draw you to her splendid whiteness, as The pistil of a water-lily draws, Adust with gold. Those girls across the sea Are tyrannously pretty,—and I swore (She seemed to me an innocent, frank girl) To bring her to you for a woman’s kiss, Not now, but on some other day or week: —We’ll call it perjury; I give her up.’ ‘No, bring her.’ ‘Now,’ said he, ‘you make it hard To touch such goodness with a grimy palm. I thought to tease you well, and fret you cross, And steel myself, when rightly vexed with you, For telling you a thing to tease you more.’