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The park as beautiful now, in its wintry garb, as it could be in its summer glory: the majestic sweep, the undulating swell and fall, displayed to full advantage in that robe of dazzling purity, stainless and printless—save one long, winding track left by the trooping deer—the stately timber-trees with their heavy-laden branches gleaming white against the dull, grey sky; the deep, encircling woods; the broad expanse of water sleeping in frozen quiet; and the weeping ash and willow drooping their snow-clad boughs above it—all presented a picture, striking indeed, and pleasing to an unencumbered mind, but by no means encouraging to me.
Little news from the fortress escaped; the world had a sense of gigantic grey figures moving here and there behind a great battle veil, of a push against the fortress, a push from all sides, with approved battering rams, scaling ladders, hooks, grapples, mines, of blue figures, all known and described in heroic terms by the Northern public prints, a push repelled by the voiceless, printless, dimly-discerned grey figures.
Underfoot was like walking on thicknesses of flannel, and except where we put our feet the place was as printless as a snowfield dust, dust, unbroken grey dust. My match burned down.... "'Wait a minute I've a bougie, said Carroll, and struck the wax match.... "There were the old sconces, with never a candle-end in them.
Her eye-brows were arched, and from her eyes shot forth the grateful rays of the rising sun. Her waist was slender; and as she ran, she outstripped the winds, and her footsteps were printless on the tender herb.
"Now, then, Aunt Melissa, prepare for the great enjoyment of the day. In a few moments we shall be of the elves 'That on the sand with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him When he comes back. Come! we shall have three hours on the beach, and that will bring us well into the cool of the evening, and we can return by the last boat."
"'Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves; And ye that on the sand, with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him When he comes back. "The dance then begins, and continues in a fantastic, at times grotesque and furious manner, the theme of the lovers being interwoven at times, in an unobtrusive way. At length, Caliban is heard approaching, singing his drunken song.
From the soft-curtained chamber of Hymen she fled, By the breath of giant Zephyr sped, And shield-bearing throngs in marshalled array Hounded her flight o'er the printless way, Where the swift-flashing oar The fair booty bore To swirling Sim'o-is' leafy shore, And stirred the crimson fray. Trans. by BLACKIE.
In the verses, "And ye that on the sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune, | and do fly him When he comes back," observe how the pauses are contrived to echo the sense and give the effect of flux and reflux. Versification was understood in that day as never since, and no treatise on English verse so good, in all respects, as that of Campion has ever been written.
You may lie awake all night and never feel the passing of evil presences, nor hear printless feet; neither do you lapse into slumber with the comfortable consciousness of those friendly watchers who sit invisibly by a lonely sleeper under an English sky.
Long before night had begun to settle down, no eye could penetrate the scudding snow a foot beyond the window ledges, except when a sudden stilling of the tempest disclosed the writhing cottonwood break to the north, and the double row of ash saplings leading south to the blotted, printless highway.
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