“I SAID AND SANG HER EXCELLENCE”

I said and sang her excellence:

They called it laud undue.

( Have your way, my heart, O! )

Yet what was homage far above

The plain deserts of my olden Love

Proved verity of my new.

“She moves a sylph in picture-land,

Where nothing frosts the air:”

( Have your way, my heart, O! )

“To all winged pipers overhead

She is known by shape and song,” I said,

Conscious of licence there.

I sang of her in a dim old hall

Dream-built too fancifully,

( Have your way, my heart, O! )

But lo, the ripe months chanced to lead

My feet to such a hall indeed,

Where stood the very She.

Strange, startling, was it then to learn

I had glanced down unborn time,

( Have your way, my heart, O! )

And prophesied, whereby I knew

That which the years had planned to do

In warranty of my rhyme.