Four days I lived in my fool's paradise, Importuning Griselda's changing eyes With idle flattery. I found her mood Softer than once in her young womanhood, Yet restless and uncertain. There were hours Of a wild gaiety, when all the powers Of her keen mind were in revolt with folly, Others bedimmed with wordless melancholy. Once too or twice she shocked me with a phrase Of doubtful sense, revealing thoughts and ways New to her past, an echo of the noise Of that mad world we lived in and its joys: Such things were sacrilege. I could not see Unmoved my angel smirched with vanity, Even though, it seemed at moments, for my sake. Her laughter, when she laughed, made my heart ache, And I had spared some pain to see her sad Rather than thus unseasonably glad. Who would have dreamed it? Each new idle day, When, tired with sport, we rested from the fray, Five jovial shooters, jaded by the sun, Seeking refreshment at the stroke of noon,-- There, with the luncheon carts all trimly dight, Stood Lady L., to the fool crowd's delight. You would have thought her life had always been Passed in the stubbles, as, with questions keen, She eyed the bags and parleyed with the "guns;" Rome's matron she with us the Goths and Huns. Young Manton proudly spread for her his coat Under a hedge, and she resented not. Resented! Why resent? Nay, smiles were there. And a swift look of pleasure, still more rare, Pleasure and gratitude, as though the act Had been of chivalry in form and fact Transcending Raleigh's. Ay, indeed! Resent! That eye were blind which doubted what it meant. And still I doubted. Vanity dies hard. And love, however starving of reward, And youth's creed of belief. It seemed a thing Monstrous, impossible, bewildering, As tales of dwarfs and giants gravely told By men of science, and transmuted gold, And magic potions turning men to beasts, And lewd witch Sabbaths danced by unfrocked priests. Griselda! Manton! In what mood or tense Could folly conjugate such dreams to sense, Or draw the contract not in terms absurd Of such a friendship or of act or word? Where was the common thought between the two-- Even of partridges--the other knew? Manton--Griselda! Nay 'twere fabulous, A mere profanity, to argue thus; Only I watched them closer when they strayed To gather blackberries, as boy and maid In a first courting, and her eager eyes Turned as he spoke, and laughter came unwise Before she answered, and an hour was flown, Before he joined the rest and she was gone.