pil for your purpose, were it--ease
Fool's poke of tutor's _honorarium_-fee?
And yet, howe'er it came about, I felt
At once my master: you as prompt descried
Your man, I warrant, so was bargain struck.
Now, these same lines of liking, loving, run
Sometimes so close together they converge--
Life's great adventures--you know what I mean--
In people. Do you know, as you advanced,
It got to be uncommonly like fact
We two had fallen in with--liked and loved
Just the same woman in our different ways?
I began life--poor groundling as I prove--
Winged and ambitious to fly high: why not?
There's something in 'Don Quixote' to the point,
My shrewd old father used to quote and praise--
'_Am I born man?_' asks Sancho: '_being man,
By possibility I may be Pope!_'
So, Pope I meant to make myself, by step
And step, whereof the first should be to find
A perfect woman; and I tell you this--
If what I fixed on, in the order due
Of undertakings, as next step, had first
Of all disposed itself to suit my tread,
And I had been, the day I came of age,
Returned at head of poll for Westminster
--Nay, and moreover summoned by the Queen
At week's end, when my maiden-speech bore fruit,
To form and head a Tory ministry--
It would not have seemed stranger, no, nor been
More strange to me, as now I estimate,
Than what did happen--sober truth, no dream.
I saw my wonder of a woman,--laugh,
I'm past that!--in Commemoration-week.
A plenty have I seen since, fair and foul,--
With eyes, too, helped by your sagacious wink;
But one to match that marvel--no least trace,
Least touch of kinship and community!
The end was--I did somehow state the fact,
Did, with no matter what imperfect words,
One way or other give to understand
That woman, soul and body were her slave
Would she but take, but try them--any test
Of will, and some poor test of power beside:
So did the strings within my brain grow tense
And capable of ... hang similitudes!
She answered kindly but beyond appeal.
'_No sort of hope for me, who came too late.
She was another's. Love went--mine to her,
Hers just as loyally to some one else._'
Of course! I might expect it! Nature's law--
Given the peerless woman, certainly
Somewhere shall be the peerless man to match!
I acquiesced