III.

Ere yet “knowledge for the million” Came out “neatly bound in boards;” When like Care upon a pillion Matrons rode behind their lords:

Rarely, save to hear the Rector, Forth did younger ladies roam; Making pies, and brewing nectar From the gooseberry-trees at home.

They'd not dreamed of Pan or Vevay; Ne'er should into blossom burst At the ball or at the levee; Never come, in fact, MY FIRST:

Nor illumine cards by dozens With some labyrinthine text, Nor work smoking-caps for cousins Who were pounding at MY NEXT.

Now have skirts, and minds, grown ampler; Now not all they seek to do Is create upon a sampler Beasts which Buffon never knew:

But their venturous muslins rustle O'er the cragstone and the snow, Or at home their biceps muscle Grows by practising the bow.

Worthier they those dames who, fable Says, rode “palfreys” to the war With gigantic Thanes, whose “sable Destriers caracoled” before;

Smiled, as — springing from the war-horse As men spring in modern‘ cirques’ - They plunged, ponderous as a four-horse Coach, among the vanished Turks: -

In the good times when the jester Asked the monarch how he was, And the landlady addrest her Guests as‘ gossip’ or as‘ coz’;

When the Templar said, “Gramercy,” Or, “‘ Twas shrewdly thrust, i’ fegs,” To Sir Halbert or Sir Percy As they knocked him off his legs:

And, by way of mild reminders That he needed coin, the Knight Day by day extracted grinders From the howling Israelite:

And MY WHOLE in merry Sherwood Sent, with preterhuman luck, Missiles — not of steel but firwood - Thro’ the two-mile-distant buck.