And the jennet pitched upon, a piebald,
        Black-barred, cream-coated and pink eye-balled—­
No wonder if the Duke was nettled! 
And when she persisted nevertheless,—­
Well, I suppose here’s the time to confess
That there ran half round our lady’s chamber 300
A balcony none of the hardest to clamber;
And that Jacynth the tire-woman, ready in waiting,

Stayed in call outside, what need of relating? 
And since Jacynth was like a June rose, why, a fervent
Adorer of Jacynth of course was your servant;
And if she had the habit to peep through the casement,
        How could I keep at any vast distance? 
        And so, as I say, on the lady’s persistence,
The Duke, dumb-stricken with amazement,
Stood for a while in a sultry smother, 310
        And then, with a smile that partook of the awful,
Turned her over to his yellow mother
        To learn what was held decorous and lawful;
And the mother smelt blood with a cat-like instinct,
As her cheek quick whitened thro’ all its quince-tinct. 
Oh, but the lady heard the whole truth at once! 
What meant she?—­Who was she?—­Her duty and station,
The wisdom of age and the folly of youth, at once,
        Its decent regard and its fitting relation—­
In brief, my friend, set all the devils in hell free 320
And turn them out to carouse in a belfry
And treat the priests to a fifty-part canon,
And then you may guess how that tongue of hers ran on! 
Well, somehow or other it ended at last
And, licking her whiskers, out she passed;
And after her,—­making (he hoped) a face
        Like Emperor Nero or Sultan Saladin,
Stalked the Duke’s self with the austere grace
        Of ancient hero or modern paladin,
>From door to staircase—­oh such a solemn 330
Unbending of the vertebral column!

XII

However, at sunrise our company mustered;
        And here was the huntsman bidding unkennel,
And there ’neath his bonnet the pricker blustered,
        With feather dank as a bough of wet fennel;
For the court-yard walls were filled with fog
You might have cut as an axe chops a log—­
Like so much wool for colour and bulkiness;
And out rode the Duke in a perfect sulkiness,
Since, before breakfast, a man feels but queasily 340
        And a sinking at the lower abdomen
        Begins the day with indifferent omen. 
And lo, as he looked around uneasily,
The sun ploughed the fog up and drove it asunder
This way and that from the valley under;
        And, looking through the court-yard arch,
Down in the valley, what should meet him
        But a troop of Gipsies on their march? 
No doubt with the annual gifts to greet him.

XIII