For when you've passed the corn-field country, And open-chase to the very base O' the mountain where, at a funeral pace, To another greater, wilder country, That's one vast red drear burnt-up plain, Branched through and through with many a vein Whence iron's dug, and copper's dealt; Look right, look left, look straight before,- Copper ore and iron ore, And forge and furnace mold and melt, Till at the last, for a bounding belt, Comes the salt sand hoar of the great seashore, -And the whole is our Duke's country. III. I was born the day this present Duke was- We are of like age to an hour. My father was huntsman in that day: That, when a boar was brought to bay, With his huntspear he'd contrive To get the killing-place transfixed, And that's why the old Duke would rather Just a month after the babe was born. 66 And," quoth the Kaiser's courier, "since The Duke looked down and seemed to wince, The row of crests and shields and banners And "Ay," said the Duke with a surly pride. At next year's end, in a velvet suit, With a gilt glove on his hand, his foot In a silken shoe for a leather boot, Petticoated like a herald, In a chamber next to an ante-room, Where he breathed the breath of page and groom, They should have got his cheek fresh tannage To flap each broad wing like a banner, And turn in the wind, and dance like flame!) Had they broached a cask of white beer from Berlin! --Or if you incline to prescribe mere wine, Put to his lips when they saw him pine, A cup of our own Moldavia fine, Cotnar, for instance, green as May sorrel IV. So, at home, the sick tall yellow Duchess And back came the Duke and his mother again. V. And he came back the pertest little ape You'd say, he despised our bluff old ways? That our rough North land was the Land of Lays, Could you taste of it yet as in its prime, So, all that the old Dukes had been, without knowing it, The souls of them fumed-forth, the hearts of them torn out: And chief in the chase his neck he periled, VI. Well, such as he was, he must marry, we heard; Came the lady, in time of spring. -Oh, old thoughts they cling, they cling! I clad myself in thick hunting-clothes Fit for the chase of urox or buffle In winter-time when you need to muffle. But the Duke had a mind we should cut a figure, And so we saw the lady arrive : My friend, I have seen a white crane bigger! She was the smallest lady alive, Made in a piece of nature's madness, Too small, almost, for the life and gladness That over-filled her, as some hive Out of the bears' reach on the high trees Is crowded with its safe merry bees: In truth, she was not hard to please! Up she looked, down she looked, round at the mead, Straight at the castle, that's best indeed To look at from outside the walls : As for us, styled the "serfs and thralls," (With her eyes, do you understand?) Because I patted her horse while I led it ; What its true name was, nor ever seemed tired— If that was an eagle she saw hover, And the green and gray bird on the field was the plover, And as down she sprung, the small foot pointed As if her first hair had grown gray; VII. In a day or two she was well again; As who should say, 66 You labor in vain! This is all a jest against God, who meant I should ever be, as I am, content And glad in his sight; therefore, glad I will be." VIII. She was active, stirring, all fire— Could not rest, could not tire To a stone she might have given life! (I myself loved once, in my day) —For a shepherd's, miner's, huntsman's wife, (I had a wife, I know what I say) Never in all the world such an one! And here was plenty to be done, And she that could do it, great or small, She was to do nothing at all. There was already this man in his post, This in his station, and that in his office, To sit thus, stand thus, see and be seen, And it was amusing enough, each infraction And, being a fool, instruct the wise, As though an artificer, after contriving A wheel-work image as if it were living, Should find with delight it could motion to strike him! So found the Duke, and his mother like him : The lady hardly got a rebuff— That had not been contemptuous enough, With his cursed smirk, as he nodded applause, IX. So, the little lady grew silent and thin, As the way is with a hid chagrin ; And the Duke perceived that she was ailing, X. you shall hear. Well, early in autumn, at first winter-warning, When the stag had to break with his foot, of a morning, That covered the pond till the sun, in a trice, And another and another, and faster and faster, |