"O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each,
That bright and fierce and fickle is the South,
And _dark_ and true and tender is the North.
"O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light
Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill,
And _cheep and twitter twenty million loves_.
"O were I thou that she might take me in,
And lay me on her bosom, _and her heart
Would rock the snowy cradle till I died_."
The prince saves the princess from being drowned, when the secret
explodes like a roll of gun cotton, and a grand turmoil ensues. The
rival kings approach to confines in battle array, and the princess
resumes the declaration of war:--
"A tide of fierce
Invective seem'd to wait behind her lips,
As waits a river level with the dam
Ready to burst and flood the world with foam:
And so she would have spoken, but there rose
A hubbub in the court of half the maids
Gather'd together; from the illumin'd hall
Long lanes of splendour slanted o'er a press
Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes,
And rainbow robes, and gems and gemlike eyes,
And gold and golden heads; they to and fro
Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, same pale,
All open-mouth'd, all gazing to the light,
Some crying there was an army in the land,
And some that men were in the very walls,
And some they cared not; till a clamour grew
As of a new-world Babel, woman-built,
And worse-confounded: high above them stood
The placid marble Muses, looking peace.
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