(Peter Ronsard, loquitur)

   "Heigho!" yawned one day King Francis,

   "Distance all value enhances.

   When a man's busy, why, leisure

   Strikes him as wonderful pleasure:

   Faith, and at leisure once is he?

   Straightway he wants to be busy.

   Here we've got peace; and aghast I'm

   Caught thinking war the true pastime.

   Is there a reason in metre?

   Give us your speech, master Peter!"                            10

   I who, if mortal dare say so,

   Ne'er am at loss with my Naso

   "Sire," I replied, "joys prove cloudlets:

   "Men are the merest Ixions"—

   Here the King whistled aloud, "Let's

   —Heigho—go look at our lions."

   Such are the sorrowful chances

   If you talk fine to King Francis.

   And so, to the courtyard proceeding,

   Our company, Francis was leading,                              20

   Increased by new followers tenfold

   Before he arrived at the penfold;

   Lords, ladies, like clouds which bedizen

   At sunset the western horizon.

   And Sir De Lorge pressed 'mid the foremost

   With the dame he professed to adore most.

   Oh, what a face!  One by fits eyed

   Her, and the horrible pitside;

   For the penfold surrounded a hollow

   Which led where the eye scarce dared follow                    30

   And shelved to the chamber secluded

   Where Bluebeard, the great lion, brooded.

   The King hailed his keeper, an Arab

   As glossy and black as a scarab,

   And bade him make sport and at once stir

   Up and out of his den the old monster.

   They opened a hole in the wire-work

   Across it, and dropped there a firework,

   And fled: one's heart's beating redoubled;

   A pause, while the pit's mouth was troubled,                   40

   The blackness and silence so utter,

   By the firework's slow sparkling and sputter;

   Then earth in a sudden contortion

   Gave out to our gaze her abortion.

   Such a brute! Were I friend Clement Marot

   (Whose experience of nature's but narrow

   And whose faculties move in no small mist

   When he versifies David the Psalmist)

   I should study that brute to describe you

   Illum Juda Leonem de Tribu.                                    50

   One's whole blood grew curdling and creepy

   To see the black mane, vast and heapy,

   The tail in the air stiff and straining

   The wide eyes, nor waxing nor waning,

   As over the barrier which bounded

   His platform, and us who surrounded

   The barrier, they reached and they rested

   On space that might stand him in best stead:

   For who knew, he thought, what the amazement,

   The eruption of clatter and blaze meant,                       60

   And if, in this minute of wonder,

   No outlet, 'mid lightning and thunder,

   Lay broad, and, his shackles all shivered,

   The lion at last was delivered?

   Ay, that was the open sky o'erhead!

   And you saw by the flash on his forehead,

   By the hope in those eyes wide and steady,

   He was leagues in the desert already

   Driving the flocks up the mountain

   Or catlike couched hard by the fountain                        70

   To waylay the date-gathering negress:

   So guarded he entrance or egress.

   "How he stands!" quoth the King: "we may well swear,

   (No novice, we've won our spurs elsewhere

   And so can afford the confession)

   We exercise wholesome discretion

   In keeping aloof from his threshold;

   Once hold you, those jaws want no fresh hold,

   Their first would too pleasantly purloin

   The visitor's brisket or surloin:                              80

   But who's he would prove so fool-hardy?

   Not the best man of Marignan, pardie!"

   The sentence no sooner was uttered,

   Than over the rails a glove fluttered,

   Fell close to the lion, and rested:

   The dame 'twas, who flung it and jested

   With life so, De Lorge had been wooing

   For months past; he sat there pursuing

   His suit, weighing out with nonchalance

   Fine speeches like gold from a balance.                        90

   Sound the trumpet, no true knight's a tarrier!

   De Lorge made one leap at the barrier,

   Walked straight to the glove—while the lion

   Ne'er moved, kept his far-reaching eye on

   The palm-tree-edged desert-spring's sapphire,

   And the musky oiled skin of the Kaffir—

   Picked it up, and as calmly retreated,

   Leaped back where the lady was seated,

   And full in the face of its owner

   Flung the glove.

   "Your heart's queen, you dethrone her?                        100

   So should I!"—cried the King—"'twas mere vanity

   Not love set that task to humanity!"

   Lords and ladies alike turned with loathing

   From such a proved wolf in sheep's clothing.

   Not so, I; for I caught an expression

   In her brow's undisturbed self-possession

   Amid the Court's scoffing and merriment,

   As if from no pleasing experiment

   She rose, yet of pain not much heedful

   So long as the process was needful,—                         110

   As if she had tried in a crucible,

   To what "speeches like gold" were reducible,

   And, finding the finest prove copper,

   Felt the smoke in her face was but proper;

   To know what she had not to trust to,

   Was worth all the ashes and dust too.

   She went out 'mid hooting and laughter;

   Clement Marot stayed; I followed after,

   And asked, as a grace, what it all meant?

   If she wished not the rash deed's recalment?                  120

   For I"—so I spoke—"am a poet:

   Human nature,—behoves that I know it!"

   She told me, "Too long had I heard

   Of the deed proved alone by the word:

   For my love—what De Lorge would not dare!

   With my scorn—what De Lorge could compare!

   And the endless descriptions of death

   He would brave when my lip formed a breath,

   I must reckon as braved, or, of course,

   Doubt his word—and moreover, perforce,                       130

   For such gifts as no lady could spurn,

   Must offer my love in return.

   When I looked on your lion, it brought

   All the dangers at once to my thought,

   Encountered by all sorts of men,

   Before he was lodged in his den—

   From the poor slave whose club or bare hands

   Dug the trap, set the snare on the sands,

   With no King and no Court to applaud,

   By no shame, should he shrink, overawed,                      140

   Yet to capture the creature made shift,

   That his rude boys might laugh at the gift

   —To the page who last leaped o'er the fence

   Of the pit, on no greater pretence

   Than to get back the bonnet he dropped,

   Lest his pay for a week should be stopped.

   So, wiser I judged it to make

   One trial what 'death for my sake'

   Really meant, while the power was yet mine,

   Than to wait until time should define                         150

   Such a phrase not so simply as I,

   Who took it to mean just 'to die.'

   The blow a glove gives is but weak:

   Does the mark yet discolour my cheek?

   But when the heart suffers a blow,

   Will the pain pass so soon, do you know?"

   I looked, as away she was sweeping.

   And saw a youth eagerly keeping

   As close as he dared to the doorway.

   No doubt that a noble should more weigh                       160

   His life than befits a plebeian;

   And yet, had our brute been Nemean—

   (I judge by a certain calm fervour

   The youth stepped with, forward to serve her)

   —He'd have scarce thought you did him the worst turn

   If you whispered "Friend, what you'd get, first earn!"

   And when, shortly after, she carried

   Her shame from the Court, and they married,

   To that marriage some happiness, maugre

   The voice of the Court, I dared augur.                        170

   For De Lorge, he made women with men vie,

   Those in wonder and praise, these in envy;

   And in short stood so plain a head taller.

   That he wooed and won... how do you call her?

   The beauty, that rose in the sequel

   To the King's love, who loved her a week well.

   And 'twas noticed he never would honour

   De Lorge (who looked daggers upon her)

   With the easy commission of stretching

   His legs in the service, and fetching                         180

   His wife, from her chamber, those straying

   Sad gloves she was always mislaying,

   While the King took the closet to chat in,—

   But of course this adventure came pat in.

   And never the King told the story,

   How bringing a glove brought such glory,

   But the wife smiled—"His nerves are grown firmer:

   Mine he brings now and utters no murmur."

   Venienti occurrite morbo!

   With which moral I drop my theorbo.                           190

   NOTES:

   "The Glove" gives a transcript from Court life, in Paris,

   under Francis I.  In making Ronsard the mouthpiece for

   a deeper observation of the meaning of the incident he is

   supposed to witness and describe than Marot and the rest

   saw, characteristic differences between these two poets of

   the time are brought out, the genuineness of courtly love

   and chivalry is tested, and to the original story of the glove

   is added a new view of the lady's character; a sketch of

   her humbler and truer lover, and their happiness; and a

   pendent scene showing the courtier De Lorges, having

   won a beauty for his wife, in the ignominious position of

   assisting the king to enjoy her favors and of submitting to

   pleasantries upon his discomfiture.  The original story as

   told by Poullain de St. Croix in his Essais Historiques sur

   Paris ran thus: "One day whilst Francis I amused himself

   with looking at a combat between his lions, a lady,

   having let her glove drop, said to De Lorges, 'If you

   would have me believe that you love me as much as you

   swear you do, go and bring back my glove.'  De Lorges

   went down, picked up the glove from amidst the ferocious

   beasts, returned, and threw it in the lady's face; and in

   spite of all her advances and cajoleries would never look

   at her again.''  Schiller running across this anecdote of

   St. Croix, in 1797, as he writes Goethe, wrote a poem

   on it which adds nothing to the story. Leigh Hunt's

   'The Glove and the Lions' adds some traits.  It characterizes

   the lady as shallow and vain, with smiles and

   eyes which always seem'd the same.''  She calculates

   since "king, ladies, lovers, all look on," that "the occasion

   is divine" to drop her glove and "prove his love,

   then look at him and smile"; and after De Lorges has

   returned and thrown the glove, "but not with love, right

   in the lady's face,'' Hunt makes the king rise and swear

   "rightly done!  No love, quoth he, but vanity, sets love

   a task like that!'' This is the material Browning worked

   on; he makes use of this speech of the king's, but remodels

   the lady's character wholly, and gives her an appreciative

   lover, and also a keen-eyed young poet to tell her

   story afresh and to reveal through his criticism the narrowness

   of the Court and the Court poets.

   12.  Naso:  Ovid.  Love of the classics and curiosity as

   to human nature were both characteristic of Peter Ronsard

   (1524-1585), at one time page to Francis I, the

   most erudite and original of French medieval poets.

   45.  Clement Marot:  (1496-1544), Court poet to Francis I.

   His nature and verse were simpler than Ronsard's,

   and he belonged more peculiarly to his own day.

   48.  Versifies David:   Marot was suspected of Protestant

   leanings which occasioned his imprisonment twice, and put

   him in need of the protection Francis and his sister gave

   him.  Among his works were sixty-five epistles addressed

   to grandees, attesting his courtiership, and the paraphrase

   of forty-nine of the Psalms to which Ronsard alludes.

   50.  Illum Juda, etc.:  that lion of the tribe of Judah.

   89.  Venienti, etc.:  Meet the coming disease; that is,

   if evil be anticipated, don't wait till it seizes you, but

   dare to assure yourself and then forestall it as the lady did.

   190.  Theorbo:  an old Italian stringed instrument such as

   pages used.