"
Ay, just as Shakspere hath it--
"To suckle fools and chronicle small beer."
The hero also meets the shock, at least in poetic grace:--
"Upon my spirits
Settled a gentle cloud of melancholy,
Which I shook off, for I was young, and one
To whom the shadow of all mischance but came
As night to him that sitting on a hill
Sees the midsummer, midnight, Norway sun,
Set into sunrise."
It is agreed to decide the contest by a combat of fifty on each
side--the one led by the prince, and the other by Arac, the brother of
the princess. And clad in "harness"--
"Issued in the sun that now
Leapt from the dewy shoulders of the Earth,
And hit the northern hills."
To the fight--
"Then rode we with the old king across the lawns
Beneath huge trees, a thousand rings of Spring
In every bole, a song on every spray
Of birds that piped their Valentines."
The prince and his companions are defeated; and he, wounded almost to
the death, is consigned at her own request to be nursed by the
princess:--
"So was their sanctuary violated,
So their fair college turn'd to hospital;
At first with all confusion; by and by
Sweet order lived again with other laws;
A kindlier influence reign'd; and everywhere
Low voices with the ministering hand
Hung round the sick.
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