There saw they David and Elspie Mackaye, and the Piper was almost Almost deeply in love with Bella the sister of Elspie; But the good Adam was heedful: they did not go too often. There in the bright October, the gorgeous bright October, When the brackens are changed, and heather blooms are faded, And amid russet of heather and fern green trees are bonnie, Alders are green, and oaks, the rowan scarlet and yellow, Heavy the aspen, and heavy with jewels of gold the birch-tree, There, when shearing had ended, and barley-stooks were garnered, David gave Philip to wife his daughter, his darling Elspie; Elspie the quiet, the brave, was wedded to Philip the poet. So won Philip his bride. They are married and gone—But oh, Thou Mighty one, Muse of great Epos, and Idyll the playful and tender, Be it recounted in song, ere we part, and thou fly to thy Pindus, (Pindus is it, O Muse, or Ætna, or even Ben-nevis?) Be it recounted in song, O Muse of the Epos and Idyll, Who gave what at the wedding, the gifts and fair gratulations. Adam, the grave careful Adam, a medicine chest and tool-box, Hope a saddle, and Arthur a plough, and the Piper a rifle, Airlie a necklace for Elspie, and Hobbes a Family Bible, Airlie a necklace, and Hobbes a Bible and iron bedstead. What was the letter, O Muse, sent withal by the corpulent hero? This is the letter of Hobbes the kilted and corpulent hero. So the last speech and confession is made, O my eloquent speaker! So _the good time_ is _coming_, or come is it? O my Chartist! So the cathedral is finished at last, O my Pugin of women; Finished, and now, is it true? to be taken out whole to New Zealand! Well, go forth to thy field, to thy barley, with Ruth, O Boaz, Ruth, who for thee hath deserted her people, her gods, her mountains. Go, as in Ephrath of old, in the gate of Bethlehem said they, Go, be the wife in thy house both Rachel and Leah unto thee; Be thy wedding of silver, albeit of iron thy bedstead! Yea, to the full golden fifty renewed be! and fair memoranda Happily fill the fly-leaves duly left in the Family Bible. Live, and when Hobbes is forgotten, may’st thou, an unroasted Grand-sire, See thy children’s children, and Democracy upon New Zealand! This was the letter of Hobbes, and this the postscript after. Wit in the letter will prate, but wisdom speaks in a postscript; Listen to wisdom—_Which things_—you perhaps didn’t know, my dear fellow, I have reflected; _Which things are an allegory_, Philip. For this Rachel-and-Leah is marriage; which, I have seen it, Lo, and have known it, is always, and must be, bigamy only, Even in noblest kind a duality, compound, and complex, One part heavenly-ideal, the other vulgar and earthy: For this Rachel-and-Leah is marriage, and Laban, their father, Circumstance, chance, the world, our uncle and hard task-master. Rachel we found as we fled from the daughters of Heth by the desert