Nor ever any knoty problemme sherked.
Yette when they askt her if she'd rather sinke
Her penne in payste, or eke her brushe in inke,
"Ah," quo' the canny mayde, "now wit ye wel,
I'm wyse enow to know—too wyse to tel."
(Henry James' version)
She luminously wavered, and I tentatively inferred that she would soon perfectly reconsider her not altogether unobvious course. Furiously, though with a tender, ebbing similitude, across her mental consciousness stole a re-culmination of all the truths she had ever known concerning, or even remotely relating to, the not-easily fathomed qualities of paste and ink. So she stood, focused in an intensity of soul-quivers, and I, all unrelenting, waited, though of a dim uncertainty whether, after all, it might not be only a dubitant problem.
(Swinburne's version)
Shall I dip, shall I dip it, Dolores,