Never believe approved biographers Who’ll show a sequence of the games then played, Explaining that the minds of these two princes Were of such subtlety and such nimbleness That Whipperginny on the fall of a card 40 Changed to Bézique or Cribbage or Piquet, Euchre or Écarté, then back once more, Each comprehending with no signal shown The opposing fancies of the other’s mind. It’s said, spectators of this play grew dazed, They turned away, thinking the gamesters drunk. But I, who sat there watching, keeping score, Say they observed the rules of but one game The whole bout, playing neither well nor ill But slowly, with their thoughts in other channels, 50 Serene and passionless like wooden men. Neither believe those elegant essayists Who reconstruct the princes’ conversation From grotesque fabrics of their own vain brains. I only know that East gave West a nod, Asking him careless questions about trade; West gave the latest rumours from the front, Raising of sieges, plots and pillages. He told a camp-fire yarn to amuse the soldiers Whereat they all laughed emptily (East laughed too). 60 He sang a few staves of the latest catch, And pulling out his roll of rhymes, unfurled it, Ballads and songs, measured by the yard-rule. But do not trust the elegant essayists Who’d have you swallow all they care to tell Of the riddling speech in painful _double entendre_ That West and East juggled across the cards, So intricate, so exquisitely resolved In polished antithetical periods That by comparison, as you must believe, 70 Solomon himself faced with the Queen of Sheba And Bishop Such, preaching before the King, Joined in one person would have seemed mere trash. I give my testimony beyond refutal, Nailing the lie for all who ask the facts. Pay no heed to those vagabond dramatists Who, to present this meeting on the stage, Would make my Prince, stealthily drawing out A golden quill and stabbing his arm for blood, Scratch on a vellum slip some hasty sentence 80 And pass it under the table; which West signs With _his_ blood, so the treaty’s made between them All unobserved and two far nations wedded While enemy soldiers loll, yawning, around. I was there myself, I say, seeing everything. Truly, this is what passed, that East regarding West with a steady look and knowing him well, For an instant let the heavy soldier-mask, His best protection, a dull cast of face, Light up with joy, and his eyes shoot out mirth. 90 West then knew East, checked, and misdealt the cards. Nothing at all was said, on went the game. But East bought from West’s bag of ballads, after, Two sombre histories, and some songs for dancing.