“Does history say nothing more about her?”
“Of course it does! It says the Vandals martyred her. Phoebe, you can’t criticise poetry as if it were prose.”
It struck Phoebe that Rhoda’s poetry was very like prose; but she said meekly, “Please go on. I ask your pardon.”
So Rhoda went on—
“Her glorious line has passed away—
The wild dream of a by-gone day!
We know not from what throne she sprang,
Britain is silent in her song—”
“What’s the matter?” asked Rhoda, interrupting herself.
“I ask your pardon,” said Phoebe again. “But—will song do with sprang? And if Ursula was a real person, as I thought she had been, she wasn’t a wild dream, was she?”
“Phoebe, I do believe you haven’t a bit of taste!” said Rhoda. “I’ll try you with one more verse, and then—
“O wake her not! Ages have passed
Since her fair eyelids closed at last.”
“I should think, then, you would find it difficult to wake her,” remarked Phoebe: but Rhoda went on as if she had not heard it,—