IX
“The words, sir?” cried a creature
Hovering mid the shine and shade as ’twixt the live world and the tomb;
But the well-known numbers needed not for me a text or teacher
To revive and re-illume.
X
Then the play . . . But how unfitted
Was this Rosalind!—a mammet quite to me, in memories nurst,
And with chilling disappointment soon I sought the street I had quitted,
To re-ponder on the first.
XI
The hag still hawked,—I met her
Just without the colonnade. “So you don’t like her, sir?” said she.
“Ah—I was once that Rosalind!—I acted her—none better—
Yes—in eighteen sixty-three.
XII
“Thus I won Orlando to me
In my then triumphant days when I had charm and maidenhood,
Now some forty years ago.—I used to say, Come woo me, woo me!”
And she struck the attitude.
XIII
It was when I had gone there nightly;
And the voice—though raucous now—was yet the old one.—Clear as noon
My Rosalind was here . . . Thereon the band withinside lightly
Beat up a merry tune.