"A space she paused, no answer came,--
'Alpine, was thine the blast?' the name
Less resolutely uttered fell,
The echoes could not catch the swell.
'Nor foe nor friend,' the stranger said,
Advancing from the hazel shade.
The startled maid, with hasty oar,
Pushed her light shallop from the shore."
and just below:
"So o'er the lake the swan would spring,
Then turn to prune its ruffled wing."
404. Prune. Pick out damaged feathers and arrange the plumage with the
bill. Cf. Shakespeare, Cymb. v. 4. 118:
"his royal bird
Prunes the immortal wing," etc.
408. Wont. Are wont, or accustomed; now used only in the participle. The
form here is the past tense of the obsolete won, or wone, to dwell. The
present is found in Milton, P. L. vii. 457:
"As from his lair the wild beast, where he wons
In forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den."
Cf. Spenser, Virgil's Gnat:
"Of Poets Prince, whether we woon beside
Faire Xanthus sprincled with Chimaeras blood,
Or in the woods of Astery abide;"
and Colin Clouts Come Home Againe:
"I weened sure he was out God alone,
And only woond in fields and forests here."
See also iv. 278 and 298 below.
409. Middle age. As James died at the age of thirty (in 1542), this is
not strictly true, but the portrait in other respects is quite accurate.
He was fond of going about disguised, and some of his freaks of this
kind are pleasantly related in Scott's Tales of a Grandfather. See on
vi. 740 below.