LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP.
225
And the river running under; and across it, from the rowans,
A brown partridge whirring near us, till we felt the air it bore,—
There, obedient to her praying, did I read aloud the poems
Made by Tuscan flutes, or instruments more various, of our own;
Read the pastoral parts of Spenser—or the subtle inter-flowings
Found in Petrarch's sonnets-—here's the book—the leaf is folded down!—
Or at times a modern volume,—Wordsworth's solemn-thoughted idyl,
Hewitt's ballad-dew, or Tennyson's enchanted reverie,—
Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which, if cut deep down the middle,
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity!—
