And the second time, a glove;
But the third time--I may bend
From my pride, and answer--'Pardon,
If he comes to take my love.'

"Then the young foot page will run--
Then my lover will ride faster,
Till he kneeleth at my knee:
'I am a duke's eldest son!
Thousand serfs do call me master,--
But, O Love, I love but _thee_!'"...

Little Ellie, with her smile
Not yet ended, rose up gayly,
Tied the bonnet, donned the shoe,
And went homeward, round a mile,
Just to see, as she did daily,
What more eggs were with the two.

Pushing through the elm-tree copse,
Winding up the stream, light-hearted,
Where the osier pathway leads,
Past the boughs she stoops, and stops.
Lo! the wild swan had deserted,
And a rat had gnawed the reeds!

Ellie went home sad and slow.
If she found the lover ever,
With his red-roan steed of steeds,
Sooth I know not; but I know
She could never show him--never,
That swan's nest among the reeds.

Mrs. Browning tells us very little of Ellie directly, yet she
leaves us with a charming picture of an innocent, imaginative,
romantic child. Ellie has been reading or listening to tales of
knight-errantry, and her mind is full of them, so that the
"sweetest pleasure ... for her future" is a lover riding straight
out of one of the romances. That she is only a child, with a
child's ideas, we may see from the fact that she can think, in her
simplicity, of no greater reward for her noble lover than a sight
of the swan's nest among the reeds, of which she alone knows.

Mrs. Browning's purpose in writing this little story in verse was
to show us how suddenly and how rudely unpleasant facts can break
in upon our dreams. Ellie could never show her lover the swan's
nest, as she had planned; and we are left with the feeling that she
never found the lover of whom she dreamed--that all of her dream
proved as false as the beautiful thought about the swan's nest.

FOOTNOTES:

[316-1] It would seem strange to us now if a soldier rode about playing
upon a lute; but in the old days of chivalry about which little Ellie
had been reading, it was looked upon as almost necessary for a knight to
be able to play and sing sweet songs to his lady.

[316-2] The saddle-cloth or housing of