N

DAME FANCY has a gallery

Half-open to the garden-breeze ;—

Around it runs a balcony

Be-set with oleander-trees,
Slender, thick and blossomy.

'Tis all built up aloft—so high,
It seems a bridge across the sky;

And down below, in lawns and leas,
And hills and dales, and plesaunces,
And corn and dingles of golden rye,
For one wide sweep the rich glebe-land
Runs dwindling up on either hand

To where the moorland meets the sky.

B

Around the columns, scroll'd about,

I trow a pleasant pictury,—

Is writ whilere how it fell out

That Jove, whom pretty dreams did flout,
Along a downy cloud did lie;

And thence in a rosy and golden shower
His glory shimmer'd adown the sky,
Where crystal Sangar wanton'd by
Its mossy banks in bud and bower
Of daffodil and bellamour,

And flower of luce and lovelily;
And how from out the panting earth
A ruddy grove at one ripe birth
Of almond rods, shot forth in flower,
Thick with thrushes' melody.

So to your right the gallery thro'
Is pictured water, green and blue,

With vermeil perch and silver trout
Flashing and twinkling in and out, ·
Amid the rushes' quake and quiver,

That nude a nymph, the gold drops shaking

Out her hair, is just forsaking,

Light her step the long reeds breaking,

Fresh i' the flushes of the river.