Lady Clara Vere de Vere, You put strange memories in my head. Not thrice your branching limes have blown Since I beheld young Laurence dead. Oh your sweet eyes, your low replies: A great enchantress you may be; But there was that across his throat Which you had hardly cared to see. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, When thus he met his mother's view, She had the passions of her kind, She spake some certain truths of you. Indeed I heard one bitter word That scarce is fit for you to hear; Her manners had not that repose Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, There stands a spectre in your hall: The guilt of blood is at your door: You changed a wholesome heart to gall. You held your course without re morse, To make him trust his modest worth, And, last, you fixed a vacant stare, And slew him with your noble birth. Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere, From yon blue heavens above us bent, The gardener Adam and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent. Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 'Tis only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood. I know you, Clara Vere de Vere; You pine among your halls and towers: The languid light of your proud eyes But sickening of a vague disease, You know so ill to deal with time, You needs must play such pranks as these. She has voters in the commons, she has lovers in the palace, And of all the fair court-ladies, few have jewels half as fine: Oft the prince has named her beauty, 'twixt the red wine and the chalice: Oh, and what was I to love her? my Beloved, my Geraldine! Yet I could not choose but love her,I was born to poet uses, To love all things set above me, all of good and all of fair: Nymphs of mountain, not of valley, we are wont to call the Muses, And in nympholeptic climbing, poets pass from mount to star. And because I was a poet, and because the people praised me, With their critical deduction for the modern writer's fault; I could sit at rich men's tables, though the courtesies that raised me, Still suggested clear between us the pale spectrum of the salt. And they praised me in her presence:- -"Will your book appear this summer?" Then returning to each other, "Yes, our plans are for the moors; Then with whisper dropped behind me, There he is! the latest comer! Oh, she only likes his verses! what is over, she endures. 66 Quite low born! self-educated! somewhat gifted though by nature, And we make a point by asking him, of being very kind;· You may speak, he does not hear you; and besides, he writes no satire, All these serpents kept by charmers, leave their natural sting behind." I grew scornfuller, grew colder, as I stood up there among them, Till, as frost intense will burn you, the cold scorning scorched my brow; When a sudden silver speaking, gravely cadenced, overrung them, And a sudden silken stirring touched my inner nature through. I looked upward and beheld her! With a calm and regnant spirit, Slowly round she swept her eye lids, and said clear before them all, "Have you such superfluous honor, sir, that able to confer it, You will come down, Mr. Bertram, my guest to Wycombe Hall?" as |