The little hearth-flower Lilia. Thus he spoke,
Part banter, part affection.

"True," she said,

"We doubt not that. O yes, you miss'd us much. I'll stake my ruby ring upon it you did."

She held it out; and as a parrot turns
Up thro' gilt wires a crafty loving eye,
And takes a lady's finger with all care,
And bites it for true heart and not for harm,
So he with Lilia's. Daintily she shriek'd

165

170

And wrung it. "Doubt my word again!" he said.

"Come, listen! here is proof that you were miss'd :

175

We seven stay'd at Christmas up to read;
And there we took one tutor as to read:

The hard-grain'd Muses of the cube and square

Were out of season: never man, I think,

So moulder'd in a sinecure as he :

180

For while our cloisters echo'd frosty feet,

And our long walks were stript as bare as brooms,
We did but talk you over, pledge you all

In wassail; often, like as many girls

Sick for the hollies and the yews

of home

As many little trifling Lilias-play'd

Charades and riddles as at Christmas here,

And what's my thought and when and where and how,
And often told a tale from mouth to mouth

185

As here at Christmas."

She remember'd that:

190

A pleasant game, she thought: she liked it more
Than magic music, forfeits, all the rest.
But these what kind of tales did men tell men,
She wonder'd, by themselves?

A half-disdain

Perch'd on the pouted blossom of her lips :
And Walter nodded at me;

“He began,

195. Cf. Enone, 76: "He prest the blossom of his lips to mine."

195

The rest would follow, each in turn; and so
We forged a sevenfold story. Kind? what kind?
Chimeras, crotchets, Christmas solecisms,

Seven-headed monsters only made to kill

Time by the fire in winter.'

200

"Kill him now,

The tyrant! kill him in the summer too,"

Said Lilia; "Why not now," the maiden Aunt.
Why not a summer's as a winter's tale?

66

A tale for summer as befits the time,

And something it should be to suit the place,
Heroic, for a hero lies beneath,

Grave, solemn!"

Walter warp'd his mouth at this

To something so mock-solemn, that I laugh'd And Lilia woke with sudden-shrilling mirth An echo like a ghostly woodpecker, Hid in the ruins; till the maiden Aunt (A little sense of wrong had touch'd her face With colour) turn'd to me with "As you will; 197-200. 1847-48. The rest would follow; so we tost the ball: What kind of tales? why, such as served to kill. 202, 203. 1847-48. "Tell one " she said: "kill him in summer too.' And "tell one" cried the solemn maiden aunt. Grave, moral, solemn, like the mouldering walls About us.

207. 1847-48.

"Take care, then, that my tale be follow'd out
By all the lieges in my royal vein :

But one that really suited time and place
Were such a medley, we should have him back
Who told the Winter's Tale to do it for us:

A Gothic ruin, and a Grecian house,

A talk of college and of ladies' rights,

A feudal knight in silken masquerade,

And there, with shrieks and strange experiments,
For which the good Sir Ralph had burnt them all,
The nineteenth century gambols on the grass.
No matter we will say whatever comes:
Here are we seven: if each man take his turn
We make a sevenfold story:" then began.

205

210

Heroic if you will, or what you will,

Or be yourself your hero if you will."

"Take Lilia, then, for heroine" clamour'd he,
"And make her some great Princess, six feet high,
Grand, epic, homicidal; and be you

The Prince to win her!"

215

"Then follow me, the Prince," 220

I answer'd, "each be hero in his turn!

Seven and yet one, like shadows in a dream.

Heroic seems our Princess as required.

But something made to suit with Time and place,
A Gothic ruin and a Grecian house,

225

A talk of college and of ladies' rights,

A feudal knight in silken masquerade,

And, yonder, shrieks and strange experiments

For which the good Sir Ralph had burnt them all—
This were a medley! we should have him back

230

Who told the "Winter's tale" to do it for us.
No matter we will say whatever comes.
And let the ladies sing us, if they will,
From time to time, some ballad or a song
To give us breathing-space."

So I began,

And the rest follow'd: and the women sang
Between the rougher voices of the men,
Like linnets in the pauses of the wind:
And here I give the story and the songs.

235

222. Added in 1851. 229. Omitted in 1850, the next line running thus:Were such a medley we should have him back. 231. In 1850, "winter's tale." In 1851, Winter's capital. In 1885 two capitals and two pairs of inverted commas; final form recurs to the present.

I

A PRINCE I was, blue-eyed, and fair in face,
Of temper amorous, as the first of May,
With lengths of yellow ringlet, like a girl,
For on my cradle shone the Northern star.

There lived an ancient legend in our house.
Some sorcerer, whom a far-off grandsire burnt
Because he cast no shadow, had foretold,
Dying, that none of all our blood should know
The shadow from the substance, and that one
Should come to fight with shadows and to fall.
For so, my mother said, the story ran.

5

10

And, truly, waking dreams were, more or less,

An old and strange affection of the house.

Myself too had weird seizures, Heaven knows what:
On a sudden in the midst of men and day,

15

And while I walk'd and talk'd as heretofore,

I seem'd to move among a world of ghosts,
And feel myself the shadow of a dream.
Our great court-Galen poised his gilt-head cane,
And paw'd his beard, and mutter'd "catalepsy."
My mother pitying made a thousand prayers;
My mother was as mild as any saint,
Half-canonized by all that look'd on her,
So gracious was her tact and tenderness:
But my good father thought a king a king;

I

20

25

2. First introduced in 1850. Cf. Love's Labour's Lost, IV. iii., "Love, whose month is ever May," and King Henry IV., Part I. IV. i. 101, "As full of spirit as the month of May."

5-21 inclusive. Added in 1851 (fourth edition).

20. 1851. and call'd it catalepsy.

23. 1847-48. And nearly canonized by all she knew.

He cared not for the affection of the house;
He held his sceptre like a pedant's wand
To lash offence, and with long arms and hands
Reach'd out, and pick'd offenders from the mass
For judgment.

Now it chanced that I had been,
While life was yet in bud and blade, betroth'd
To one, a neighbouring Princess: she to me
Was proxy-wedded with a bootless calf
At eight years old; and still from time to time
Came murmurs of her beauty from the South,
And of her brethren, youths of puissance;
And still I wore her picture by my heart,

And one dark tress; and all around them both

Sweet thoughts would swarm as bees about their queen.

30

35

But when the days drew nigh that I should wed,
My father sent ambassadors with furs

40

And jewels, gifts, to fetch her: these brought back
A present, a great labour of the loom;
And therewithal an answer vague as wind:
Besides, they saw the king; he took the gifts;
He said there was a compact; that was true:
But then she had a will; was he to blame?
And maiden fancies; loved to live alone
Among her women; certain, would not wed.

45

That morning in the presence room I stood
With Cyril and with Florian, my two friends:

26. Added in 1851.

50

33. The reference here is to a ceremony occasionally observed in proxymarriages in the Middle Ages. The best commentary will be Bacon's account of the proxy-marriage of Maximilian of Austria and Anne of Brittany in 1489: "Maximilian. so far prevailed, both with the young lady and with the principal persons about her, as the marriage was consummated by proxy with a ceremony at that time in these parts new. For she was not only publicly contracted, but stated as a bride, and solemnly bedded; and after she was laid there came in Maximilian's ambassador with letters of procuration, and in the presence of sundry noble personages, men and women, put his leg, stripped naked to the knee, between the espousal sheets" (History of Henry VII., ad med.). But this ceremony was only observed in the case of adults, and Tennyson's application of it to the betrothal of children is without warrant, and absurd. See Mr. Dawson's elaborate and excellent note on this passage in his study of The Princess, pp. 62, 63.

36. 1847-48. knights.