Shoaling through twilight to my silver tinglings
The great-ruff’d ladies beset with pearl
Come out with the gallants in gems of Cadiz
In lofty capriols with loud spur-jinglings
In Roman galliard and in blithe coranto
Learnt in far Otranto
Brought home in the galleys of the Earl—
Storm-riding galleys of the haughty Earl—
To English vallies.
They come
With reverences stately at meeting
In mockeries sedately retreating
And stomachers and buckles and rings
Shake a maze of jewels to the measured strings,
Of trembling jewels.
Ay, moonlight’s fair in yew-clipt alleys,
And young Love fledges
His shafts ’twixt cypress hedges.
Follow the rout, and watch in gentle wind
The springing moonbeam of the fountain sway’d
Like to a mountain maid
Who turns with poisëd jar
From bubbling hollow cool.
“Behold, how’t tosses rain of Pleiads hither
Into main blackness of the pool—
Rings ever shimmering out and sheen reborn;
So, thou and I, lady, must die
To wake, as echoes wake, of yonder horn
With voiceless over the hills of morn.
Ah, satin-quilted kirtle,
Ah, pearled bosom,
Let slip one flake of blossom,
Deign but a sprig of myrtle,
To the poor Fool, panting on his bended knee!”
But silent grow the long swards cedar-shaded
Where the young loves were sitting;
And lo, in the silver-candled hall
The bat is flitting, flitting.
The tapestries are dusk upon the wall
And the ladies bright, brocaded,
All, with their blushes, faded.