212
LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP.
Even the prince has named her beauty, 'twixt the red wine and the chalice:
Oh, and what was I to love her? my beloved, my Geraldine!
Yet I could not choose but love her—I was born to poet uses—
To love all things set above me, all of good and all of fair!
Nymphs of old Parnassus mountain, we are wont to call the Muses—
And in silver-footed climbing, poets pass from mount to star.
And because I was a poet, and because the people praised me,
With their critical deductions for the modern writer's fault;
I could sit at rich men's tables,—though the courtesies that raised me.
Still suggested clear between us, the pale spectrum of the salt.
