Maid Marian. Thomas Love Peacock

changeful time, with hand severe,

           Has made me now these joys forego,

      Yet my heart bounds whene’er I hear

           Yoicks! hark away! and tally ho!

      Matilda chimed in as before.

      “Are you mad?” said the baron. “Are you insane? Are you possessed? What do you mean? What in the devil’s name do you both mean?”

      Yoicks! hark away! and tally ho!

      roared the friar.

      The baron’s pent-up wrath had accumulated like the waters above the dam of an overshot mill. The pond-head of his passion being now filled to the utmost limit of its capacity, and beginning to overflow in the quivering of his lips and the flashing of his eyes, he pulled up all the flash-boards at once, and gave loose to the full torrent of his indignation, by seizing, like furious Ajax, not a messy stone more than two modern men could raise, but a vast dish of beef more than fifty ancient yeomen could eat, and whirled it like a coit, in terrorem, over the head of the friar, to the extremity of the apartment,

      Where it on oaken floor did settle,

      With mighty din of ponderous metal.

      “Nay father,” said Matilda, taking the baron’s hand, “do not harm the friar: he means not to offend you. My gaiety never before displeased you. Least of all should it do so now, when I have need of all my spirits to outweigh the severity of my fortune.”

      As she spoke the last words, tears started into her eyes, which, as if ashamed of the involuntary betraying of her feelings, she turned away to conceal. The baron was subdued at once. He kissed his daughter, held out his hand to the friar, and said, “Sing on, in God’s name, and crack away the flasks till your voice swims in canary.” Then turning to Sir Ralph, he said, “You see how it is, sir knight. Matilda is my daughter; but she has me in leading-strings, that is the truth of it.”