This had been breathed, just idly, in my ear:
Shame on my beard, I ne'er pursued the hint.
Well, when we four were deep amid our cups,
The Knight must sing 'The Wolf' (a local song)
Right through for mischief. All at once she wept
Hot tears as girls of six years old might weep,
Clinging and clamouring round their mother's lap.
And I, (you know my humour, friend of mine,)
Drove at his face, one, two! She gathered up
Her robes and vanished straightway through the door.
"And so I fail to please, false lady mine?
Another lies more welcome in thy lap?
Go warm that other's heart: he'll say thy tears
Are liquid pearls." And as a swallow flies
Forth in a hurry, here or there to find
A mouthful for her brood among the eaves:
From her soft sofa passing-swift she fled
Through folding-doors and hall, with random feet:
_'The stag had gained his heath':_ you know the rest.
Three weeks, a month, nine days and ten to that,
To-day's the eleventh: and 'tis just two months
All but two days, since she and I were two.
Hence is my beard of more than Thracian growth.
Now Wolf is all to her: Wolf enters in
At midnight; I am a cypher in her eyes;
The poor Megarian, nowhere in the race.
All would go right, if I could once _unlove_:
But now, you wot, the rat hath tasted tar.
And what may cure a swain at his wit's end
I know not: Simus, (true,) a mate of mine,
Loved Epichalcus' daughter, and took ship
And came home cured.
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