THE GLOVE

(Peter Ronsard, loquitur)

“Heigho!” yawned one day King Francis,
“Distance all value enhances. 
When a man’s busy, why, leisure
Strikes him as wonderful pleasure: 
Faith, and at leisure once is he? 
Straightway he wants to be busy. 
Here we’ve got peace; and aghast I’m
Caught thinking war the true pastime. 
Is there a reason in metre? 
Give us your speech, master Peter!” 10
I who, if mortal dare say so,
Ne’er am at loss with my Naso
“Sire,” I replied, “joys prove cloudlets: 
“Men are the merest Ixions”—­
Here the King whistled aloud, “Let’s
—­Heigho—­go look at our lions.” 
Such are the sorrowful chances
If you talk fine to King Francis.

And so, to the courtyard proceeding,
Our company, Francis was leading, 20
Increased by new followers tenfold
Before he arrived at the penfold;
Lords, ladies, like clouds which bedizen
At sunset the western horizon. 
And Sir De Lorge pressed ’mid the foremost
With the dame he professed to adore most. 
Oh, what a face!  One by fits eyed
Her, and the horrible pitside;
For the penfold surrounded a hollow
Which led where the eye scarce dared follow 30
And shelved to the chamber secluded
Where Bluebeard, the great lion, brooded.

The King hailed his keeper, an Arab
As glossy and black as a scarab,
And bade him make sport and at once stir
Up and out of his den the old monster. 
They opened a hole in the wire-work
Across it, and dropped there a firework,
And fled:  one’s heart’s beating redoubled;
A pause, while the pit’s mouth was troubled, 40
The blackness and silence so utter,
By the firework’s slow sparkling and sputter;
Then earth in a sudden contortion
Gave out to our gaze her abortion. 
Such a brute!  Were I friend Clement Marot
(Whose experience of nature’s but narrow
And whose faculties move in no small mist
When he versifies David the Psalmist)
I should study that brute to describe you
Illum Juda Leonem de Tribu. 50
One’s whole blood grew curdling and creepy
To see the black mane, vast and heapy,
The tail in the air stiff and straining
The wide eyes, nor waxing nor waning,
As over the barrier which bounded
His platform, and us who surrounded
The barrier, they reached and they rested
On space that might stand him in best stead: 
For who knew, he thought, what the amazement,
The eruption of clatter and blaze meant, 60
And if, in this minute of wonder,
No outlet, ’mid lightning and thunder,
Lay broad, and, his shackles all shivered,
The lion at last was delivered? 
Ay, that was the open sky o’erhead! 
And you saw by the flash on his forehead,