To me, her friend of the years before;

And this was what had redden'd her cheek

When I bow'd to her on the moor.

7.

Yet Maud, altho' not blind

To the faults of his heart and mind,

I see she cannot but love him,

And says he is rough but kind,
And wishes me to approve him,

And tells me, when she lay

Sick once, with a fear of worse,

That he left his wine and horses and play,

Sat with her, read to her, night and day,

And tended her like a nurse.

8.

Kind? but the deathbed desire

Spurn'd by this heir of the liar—

Rough but kind? yet I know

He has plotted against me in this,

That he plots against me still.

Kind to Maud? that were not amiss.

Well, rough but kind; why, let it be so:

For shall not Maud have her will?

9.

For, Maud, so tender and true,

As long as my life endures

I feel I shall owe you a debt,

That I never can hope to pay;

And if ever I should forget

That I owe this debt to you

And for your sweet sake to yours;

O then, what then shall I say?—

If ever I should forget,

May God make me more wretched

Than ever I have been yet!

10.

So now I have sworn to bury

All this dead body of hate,

I feel so free and so clear

By the loss of that dead weight,

That I should grow light-headed, I fear,

Fantastically merry;

But that her brother comes, like a blight

On my fresh hope, to the Hall to-night.

XX.

1.

STRANGE, that I felt so gay,

Strange, that I tried to-day

To beguile her melancholy;

The Sultan, as we name him,—

She did not wish to blame him— But he vext her and perplext her

With his worldly talk and folly:

Was it gentle to reprove her
For stealing out of view

From a little lazy lover

Who but claims her as his due ?

Or for chilling his caresses

By the coldness of her manners,

Nay, the plainness of her dresses ?

Now I know her but in two,

Nor can pronounce upon it

If one should ask me whether

The habit, hat, and feather,

Or the frock and gipsy bonnet
Be the neater and completer;

For nothing can be sweeter

Than maiden Maud in either.

2.

But to morrow, if we live,

Our ponderous squire will give

A grand political dinner

To half the squirelings near;

And Maud will wear her jewels,

And the bird of prey will hover,

And the titmouse hope to win her

With his chirrup at her ear.