n epitaph beside her lord's,
And six lines shorter, which was all a shame;
Gaunt Richard heir; that other at earth's end,
(The younger son that was her sweetheart once,)
Fighting the Spaniards, getting slain perchance;
And all dear old-time uses quite forgot.
Slowly, unnoted, like the creeping rust
That spreads insidious, had estrangement come,
Until at last, one knew not how it fell,
And little cared, if sober truth were said,
She and the father no more climbed the hill
To Twelfth Night festival or May-day dance,
Nor commerce had with any at The Towers.
Yet in a formless, misty sort of way
The girl had place in Wyndham's mind--the girl,
Why, yes, beshrew him! it was even she
Whom his soft mother had made favorite of,
And well-nigh spoiled, some dozen summers gone.

Perhaps because dull custom made her tame,
Or that she was not comely in the bud,
Her sweetness halting like a tardy May
That wraps itself in mist, and seems not fair,
For this or finer reason undivined,
His thought she touched not, and was glad withal
When she did note how others took his eye
And wore rue after. Thus was her white peace
Undarkened till, it so befell, these two
Meeting as they a hundred times had met
On hill-path or at crossing of the weir,
Her beauty broke on him like some rare flower
That was not yesterday. Ev'n so the Spring
Unclasps the girdle of its loveliness
Abruptly, in the North here: long the drifts
Linger in hollows, long on bough and briar
No slight leaf ventures, lest the frost's keen tooth
Nip it, and then all suddenly the earth
Is nought but scent and bloom. So unto him
Griselda's grace unclosed. Where lagged his wit
That guessed not of the bud that slept in stem,
Nor hint had of the flower within the bud?
If so much beauty had a tiger been,
'T had eaten him! In all the wave-washed length
Of rocky Devon where was found her like
For excellence of wedded red and white?
Here on that smooth and sunny field, her cheek,
The hostile hues of Lancaster and York
Did meet, and, blending, make a heavenly truce,
This were indeed a rose a king might wear
Upon his bosom. By St. Dunstan, now,
Himself would wear it. Then by seeming chance
Crossed he her walks, and stayed her