class="dramaline">Have held more bitterness than all my life,

While I was yet a child.” The great bright tears

Slipped through her lashes. “Oh, my childish years!

Years that were all my own, too sadly few,

When I was happy—and yet never knew

How happy till to-day!” Her maidens came

About her as she wept, whispering her name,

Leda, sweet Leda, with a hundred dear

Caressing words to soothe her heavy cheer.

At last she started up with a fierce pride

Upon her face. “I am a queen,” she cried,

“But had forgotten it a while; and you,

Wenches of mine, you were forgetful too.

Undress me. We would bathe ourself.” So proud

A queen she stood, that all her maidens bowed

In trembling fear and scarcely dared approach

To do her bidding. But at last the brooch

Pinned at her shoulder is undone, the wide

Girdle of silk beneath her breasts untied;

The tunic falls about her feet, and she

Steps from the crocus folds of drapery,

Dazzlingly naked, into the warm sun.

God-like she stood; then broke into a run,

Leaping and laughing in the light, as though

Life through her veins coursed with so swift a flow

Of generous blood and fire that to remain

Too long in statued queenliness were pain

To that quick soul, avid of speed and joy.

She ran, easily bounding, like a boy,

Narrow of haunch and slim and firm of breast.

Lovelier she seemed in motion than at rest,

If that might be, when she was never less,

Moving or still, than perfect loveliness.

At last, with cheeks afire and heaving flank,

She checked her race, and on the river’s bank

Stood looking down at her own echoed shape

And at the fish that, aimlessly agape,

Hung midway up their heaven of flawless glass,

Like angels waiting for eternity to pass.

Leda drew breath and plunged; her gasping cry

Splashed up; the water circled brokenly

Out from that pearly shudder of dipped limbs;

The glittering pool laughed up its flowery brims,

And everything, save the poor fish, rejoiced:

Their idiot contemplation of the Moist,

The Cold, the Watery, was in a trice

Ended when Leda broke their crystal paradise.

Jove in his high Olympian chamber lay

Hugely supine, striving to charm away

In sleep the long, intolerable noon.

But heedless Morpheus still withheld his boon,

And Jove upon his silk-pavilioned bed

Tossed wrathful and awake. His fevered head

Swarmed with a thousand fancies, which forecast

Delights to be, or savoured pleasures past.

Closing his eyes, he saw his eagle swift,

Headlong as his own thunder, stoop and lift

On pinions upward labouring the prize

Of beauty ravished for the envious skies.

He saw again that bright, adulterous pair,