And her famous mates of “Arden,” Who observed no stricter customs than “the seasons’ difference” bade, Who lived with running brooks for books in Nature’s wildwood garden, And called idleness their trade . . . VI Now the poster stirred an ember Still remaining from my ardours of some forty years before, When the selfsame portal on an eve it thrilled me to remember A like announcement bore; VII And expectantly I had entered, And had first beheld in human mould a Rosalind woo and plead, On whose transcendent figuring my speedy soul had centred As it had been she indeed . . . VIII So; all other plans discarding, I resolved on entrance, bent on seeing what I once had seen, And approached the gangway of my earlier knowledge, disregarding The tract of time between. IX “The words, sir?” cried a creature Hovering mid the shine and shade as ’twixt the live world and the tomb; But the well-known numbers needed not for me a text or teacher To revive and re-illume. X Then the play . . . But how unfitted Was _this_ Rosalind!—a mammet quite to me, in memories nurst, And with chilling disappointment soon I sought the street I had quitted, To re-ponder on the first. XI The hag still hawked,—I met her Just without the colonnade. “So you don’t like her, sir?” said she. “Ah—_I_ was once that Rosalind!—I acted her—none better— Yes—in eighteen sixty-three. XII “Thus I won Orlando to me In my then triumphant days when I had charm and maidenhood, Now some forty years ago.—I used to say, _Come woo me_, _woo me_!” And she struck the attitude. XIII It was when I had gone there nightly; And the voice—though raucous now—was yet the old one.—Clear as noon My Rosalind was here . . . Thereon the band withinside lightly Beat up a merry tune. A SUNDAY MORNING TRAGEDY (_circa_ 186–) I BORE a daughter flower-fair, In Pydel Vale, alas for me; I joyed to mother one so rare, But dead and gone I now would be. Men looked and loved her as she grew, And she was won, alas for me; She told me nothing, but I knew, And saw that sorrow was to be. I knew that one had made her thrall, A thrall to him, alas for me; And then, at last, she told me all, And wondered what her end would be. She owned that she had loved too well, Had loved too well, unhappy she, And bore a secret time would tell, Though in her shroud she’d sooner be. I plodded to her sweetheart’s door In Pydel Vale, alas for me: I pleaded with him, pleaded sore, To save her from her misery.