It were good-natured--were it not, Lady Paget ?--to complete it for him.

Try your rhyming faculties." Lady Paget, prosaic from her cradle upwards as ever any lady of the bedchamber before or after her, disclaimed all possibility of assisting the young poet.
"Nay, then, we must sacrifice to the Muses ourselves," said Elizabeth.
"The incense of no one can be more acceptable," said Lady Paget; "and your Highness will impose such obligation on the ladies of Parnassus--" "Hush, Paget," said the Queen, "you speak sacrilege against the immortal Nine--yet, virgins themselves, they should be exorable to a Virgin Queen--and therefore--let me see how runs his verse-- 'Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall.' Might not the answer (for fault of a better) run thus ?-- 'If thy mind fail thee, do not climb at all.'" The dame of honour uttered an exclamation of joy and surprise at so happy a termination; and certainly a worse has been applauded, even when coming from a less distinguished author.
The Queen, thus encouraged, took off a diamond ring, and saying, "We will give this gallant some cause of marvel when he finds his couplet perfected without his own interference," she wrote her own line beneath that of Raleigh.
The Queen left the pavilion; but retiring slowly, and often looking back, she could see the young cavalier steal, with the flight of a lapwing, towards the place where he had seen her make a pause.

"She stayed but to observe," as she said, "that her train had taken;" and then, laughing at the circumstance with the Lady Paget, she took the way slowly towards the Palace.

Elizabeth, as they returned, cautioned her companion not to mention to any one the aid which she had given to the young poet, and Lady Paget promised scrupulous secrecy.

It is to be supposed that she made a mental reservation in favour of Leicester, to whom her ladyship transmitted without delay an anecdote so little calculated to give him pleasure.
Raleigh, in the meanwhile, stole back to the window, and read, with a feeling of intoxication, the encouragement thus given him by the Queen in person to follow out his ambitious career, and returned to Sussex and his retinue, then on the point of embarking to go up the river, his heart beating high with gratified pride, and with hope of future distinction.
The reverence due to the person of the Earl prevented any notice being taken of the reception he had met with at court, until they had landed, and the household were assembled in the great hall at Sayes Court; while that lord, exhausted by his late illness and the fatigues of the day, had retired to his chamber, demanding the attendance of Wayland, his successful physician.