15/29 He was full of inbred suspicions and, perhaps, of unreasonable demands. He resented the confinement of the dinner-table, the impalement of the ball-room, the imprisonment of the pew. Like the lion in Browning's poem, 'The Glove'-- You saw by the flash on his forehead, By the hope in those eyes wide and steady, He was leagues in the desert already, Driving the flocks up the mountain. His thoughts went back to his old friend Petulengro, who pronounced life to be sweet: 'There's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things. There's likewise a wind on the heath. |