interpolated, earnestly; but he only rejoined:

"No, no! proceed, I entreat you! it is very beautiful--very touching,
too!" Speaking calmly, and slacking rein, so that the grating of the
wheels among the stems of the scarlet _lychnis_, that grew in immense
patches on our road, might not disturb his sense of hearing, which,
by-the-way, was exquisitely nice and fastidious.

"As you please, then;" and I continued the recitation.

"'How shall I woo her? I will try
The charms of olden time,
And swear by earth, and sea, and sky,
And rave in prose and rhyme--
And I will tell her, when I bent
My knee in other years,
I was not half so _eloquent_;
I could not speak--_for tears_!'"

I watched him narrowly; the spell was working now; the poet's hand was
sweeping, with a gust of power, that harp of a thousand strings, the
wondrous human heart! And I again pursued, in suppressed tones of
heart-felt emotion, the pathetic strain that he had evoked with an idea
of its frivolity alone:

"'How shall I woo her? I will bow
Before the holy shrine,
And pray the prayer, and vow the vow,
And press her lips to mine--
And I will tell her, when she starts