Page:Guy Mannering Vol 3.djvu/274

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264
GUY MANNERING.

CHAPTER XIV.

To hail the king in seemly sort
The ladie was full fain;
But King Arthur, all sore amazed,
No answer made again.
"What wight art thou," the ladie said,
"That will not speak to me?
Sir, I may chance to ease thy pain,
Though I be foul to see."

The fairy bride of Sir Gawaine, while under the influence of the spell of her wicked step-mother, was more decrepid probably, and what is commonly called more ugly, than Meg Merrilies; but I doubt if she possessed that wild sublimity which an excited imagination communicated to features, marked and expressive in their own peculiar character, and to the gestures of a form, which, her sex considered, might