. .
VIII
So; all other plans discarding,
I resolved on entrance, bent on seeing what I once had seen,
And approached the gangway of my earlier knowledge, disregarding
The tract of time between.
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.
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