Where poisoned leisure lies,
And point the path of tears and wrath
Which mounts to high emprise!

A heart! A heart! Ah, give me a heart
To rise to circumstance!
Serene and high and bold to try
The hazard of the chance,
With strength to wait, but fixed as fate
To plan and dare and do,
The peer of all, and only thrall,
Sweet lady mine, to you!

It may have been that the sentiment went for more than the music,
or it may have been the nicety of her own ears had been dulled by
age, but old Dame Ermyntrude clapped her lean hands together and
cried out in shrill applause.

"Weathercote has indeed had an apt pupil!" she said. "I pray you
that you will sing again."

"Nay, dear dame, it is turn and turn betwixt you and me. I beg
that you will recite a romance, you who know them all. For all
the years that I have listened I have never yet come to the end of
them, and I dare swear that there are more in your head than in
all the great books which they showed me at Guildford Castle. I
would fain hear `Doon of Mayence,' or `The Song of Roland,' or
`Sir Isumbras.'"

So the old dame broke into a long poem, slow and dull in the