86
THE PRINCESS;
But led by golden wishes and a hope
The child of regal compact, did I break
Your precinct; not a scorner of your sex
But venerator, and willing it should be
All that it might be: hear me, for I bear,
Tho' man, yet human, whatsoe'er your wrongs,
From the flaxon curl to the gray lock a life
Less mine than yours: my nurse would tell me of you;
I babbled for you, as babies for the moon,
Vague brightness; when a boy, you stoop'd to me
From all high places, lived in all fair lights,
Came in long breezes rapt from the inmost south
And blown to the inmost north; at eye and dawn
With Ida, Ida, Ida, rang the woods;
The leader wildswan in among the stars
Would clang it and lapt in wreaths of glowworm light
The mellow breaker murmur'd Ida. Now,
Because I would have reach'd you, tho' you had been
Sphered up with Cassiopëia, or the enthróned
Persephone in Hades, now at length,
The child of regal compact, did I break
Your precinct; not a scorner of your sex
But venerator, and willing it should be
All that it might be: hear me, for I bear,
Tho' man, yet human, whatsoe'er your wrongs,
From the flaxon curl to the gray lock a life
Less mine than yours: my nurse would tell me of you;
I babbled for you, as babies for the moon,
Vague brightness; when a boy, you stoop'd to me
From all high places, lived in all fair lights,
Came in long breezes rapt from the inmost south
And blown to the inmost north; at eye and dawn
With Ida, Ida, Ida, rang the woods;
The leader wildswan in among the stars
Would clang it and lapt in wreaths of glowworm light
The mellow breaker murmur'd Ida. Now,
Because I would have reach'd you, tho' you had been
Sphered up with Cassiopëia, or the enthróned
Persephone in Hades, now at length,
