Perhaps I am
as well here as in town. There I always hope, I always fear to
meet HER . . . my cousin, you know. I think I see her face under
every bonnet. God knows I don't go where she is likely to be met.
Oh, Pen, haeret lethalis arundo; it is always right--the Latin
Delectus! Everything I see is full of her, everything I do is done
for her. "Perhaps she'll see it and know the hand, and remember,"
I think, even when I do the mail-coaches and the milestones. I
used to draw for her at Brighton when she was a child. My
sketches, my pictures, are always making that silent piteous appeal
to her, WON'T YOU LOOK AT US? WON'T YOU REMEMBER? I dare say she
has quite forgotten. Here I send you a little set of rhymes; my
picture of Blondel and this old story brought them into my mind.
They are gazes, as the drunk painter says in "Gerfaut;" they are
veiled, a mystery. I know she's not in a castle or a tower or a
cloistered cell anywhere; she is in Park Lane. Don't I read it in
the "Morning Post?" But I can't, I won't, go and sing at the area-
gate, you know. Try if F. B. will put the rhymes into the paper.
Do they take it in in Park Lane? See whether you can get me a
guinea for these tears of mine: "Mes Larmes," Pen, do you
remember?--Yours ever, C. N.
The verses are enclosed.
THE NEW BLONDEL.
O ma Reine!
Although the Minstrel's lost you long,
Although for bread the Minstrel sings,
Ah, still for you he pipes the song,
And thrums upon the crazy strings!
As Blondel sang by cot and hall,
Through town and stream and forest passed,
And found, at length, the dungeon wall,
And freed the Lion-heart at last -
So must your hapless minstrel fare,
By hill and hollow violing;
He flings a ditty on the air,
He wonders if you hear him sing!
For in some castle you must dwell
Of this wide land he wanders through -
In palace, tower, or cloistered cell -
He knows not; but he sings to YOU!
The wind may blow it to your ear,
And you, perchance, may understand;
But from your lattice, though you hear,
He knows you will not wave a hand.
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