Page:Westward Ho! (1855).djvu/44

36 With which sufficiently bad verses Loyalty passed on, while my Lady Bath hinted to Sir Richard, not without reason, that the poet, in trying to exalt both parties, had very sufficiently snubbed both, and intimated, that it was "hardly safe for country wits to attempt that euphuistic, antithetical, and delicately conceited vein, whose proper fountain was in Whitehall." However, on went Loyalty, very well pleased with himself, and next, amid much cheering, two great tinsel fish, a salmon, and a trout, symbolical of the wealth of Torridge, waddled along, by means of two human legs and a staff apiece, which protruded from the fishes' stomachs. They drew (or seemed to draw, for half the 'prentices in the town were shoving it behind, and cheering on the panting monarchs of the flood) a car wherein sate, amid reeds and river-flags, three or four pretty girls in robes of gray-blue spangled with gold, their heads wreathed one with a crown of the sweet bog-myrtle, another with hops and white convolvulus, the third with pale heather and golden fern. They stopped opposite Amyas; and she of the myrtle wreath, rising and bowing to him and the company, began with a pretty blush to say her say:—

Hither from my moorland home, Nymph of Torridge, proud I come; Leaving fen and furzy brake, Haunt of eft and spotted snake, Where to fill mine urns I use, Daily with Atlantic dews; While beside the reedy flood Wild duck leads her paddling brood. For this morn, as Phœbus gay Chased through heaven the night mist gray, Close beside me, prankt in pride, Sister Tamar rose, and cried, Sluggard, up! 'Tis holiday, In the lowlands far away. Hark! how jocund Blymouth bells, Wandering up through mazy dells, Call me down, with smiles to hail, My oaring Drake's returning sail.' Thine alone?' I answer'd. 'Nay; Mine as well the joy to-day; Heroes train'd on Northern wave, To that Argo new I gave; Lent to thee, they roam'd the main: Give me, nymph, my sons again.' Go, they wait Thee,' Tamar cried, Southward bounding from my side. Glad I rose, and at my call, Came my Naiads, one and all. Nursling of the mountain sky, Leaving Dian's choir on high, Down her cataracts laughing loud, Ockment leapt from crag and cloud, Leading many a nymph, who dwells Where wild deer drink in ferny dells; While the Oreads as they past Peep'd from Druid Tors aghast By alder copses sliding slow, Knee-deep in flowers came gentler Yeo And paused awhile her locks to twine With musky hops and white woodbine, Then joined the silver-footed band, Which circled down my golden sand, By dappled park, and harbor shady,