The Study of Poetry • Paragraph 760
Stage 1 of 6

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However, at sunrise our company mustered; And here was the huntsman bidding unkennel, And there ‘neath his bonnet the pricker blustered, With feather dank as a bough of wet fennel; For the court-yard walls were filled with fog You might cut as an axe chops a log-- Like so much wool for color and bulkiness; And out rode the Duke in a perfect sulkiness, Since, before breakfast, a man feels but queasily, {340} And a sinking at the lower abdomen Begins the day with indifferent omen. And lo! as he looked around uneasily, The sun ploughed the fog up and drove it asunder, This way and that, from the valley under; And, looking through the court-yard arch, Down in the valley, what should meet him But a troop of gypsies on their march? No doubt with the annual gifts to greet him.