The Princess

   Sweet and low, sweet and low,
      Wind of the western sea,
   Low, low, breathe and blow,
      Wind of the western sea!
   Over the rolling waters go,
   Come from the dying moon, and blow,
      Blow him again to me;
   While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.

   Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,
      Father will come to thee soon;
   Rest, rest, on mother's breast,
      Father will come to thee soon;
   Father will come to his babe in the nest,
   Silver sails all out of the west
      Under the silver moon:
   Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.

   Morn in the wake of the morning star
   Came furrowing all the orient into gold.
   We rose, and each by other drest with care
   Descended to the court that lay three parts
   In shadow, but the Muses' heads were touched
   Above the darkness from their native East.

        There while we stood beside the fount, and watched
   Or seemed to watch the dancing bubble, approached
   Melissa, tinged with wan from lack of sleep,
   Or grief, and glowing round her dewy eyes
   The circled Iris of a night of tears;
   'And fly,' she cried, 'O fly, while yet you may!
   My mother knows:'  and when I asked her 'how,'
   'My fault' she wept 'my fault! and yet not mine;
   Yet mine in part.  O hear me, pardon me.
   My mother, 'tis her wont from night to night
   To rail at Lady Psyche and her side.
   She says the Princess should have been the Head,
   Herself and Lady Psyche the two arms;
   And so it was agreed when first they came;
   But Lady Psyche was the right hand now,
   And the left, or not, or seldom used;
   Hers more than half the students, all the love.
   And so last night she fell to canvass you:
   Her countrywomen! she did not envy her.
   "Who ever saw such wild barbarians?
   Girls?—more like men!" and at these words the snake,
   My secret, seemed to stir within my breast;
   And oh, Sirs, could I help it, but my cheek
   Began to burn and burn, and her lynx eye
   To fix and make me hotter, till she laughed:
   "O marvellously modest maiden, you!
   Men! girls, like men! why, if they had been men
   You need not set your thoughts in rubric thus
   For wholesale comment."  Pardon, I am shamed
   That I must needs repeat for my excuse
   What looks so little graceful:  "men" (for still
   My mother went revolving on the word)
   "And so they are,—very like men indeed—
   And with that woman closeted for hours!"
   Then came these dreadful words out one by one,
   "Why—these—are—men:"  I shuddered:  "and you know it."
   "O ask me nothing," I said:  "And she knows too,
   And she conceals it."  So my mother clutched
   The truth at once, but with no word from me;
   And now thus early risen she goes to inform
   The Princess:  Lady Psyche will be crushed;
   But you may yet be saved, and therefore fly;
   But heal me with your pardon ere you go.'

        'What pardon, sweet Melissa, for a blush?'
   Said Cyril:  'Pale one, blush again:  than wear
   Those lilies, better blush our lives away.
   Yet let us breathe for one hour more in Heaven'
   He added, 'lest some classic Angel speak
   In scorn of us, "They mounted, Ganymedes,
   To tumble, Vulcans, on the second morn."
   But I will melt this marble into wax
   To yield us farther furlough:'  and he went.

        Melissa shook her doubtful curls, and thought
   He scarce would prosper.  'Tell us,' Florian asked,
   'How grew this feud betwixt the right and left.'
   'O long ago,' she said, 'betwixt these two
   Division smoulders hidden; 'tis my mother,
   Too jealous, often fretful as the wind
   Pent in a crevice:  much I bear with her:
   I never knew my father, but she says
   (God help her) she was wedded to a fool;
   And still she railed against the state of things.
   She had the care of Lady Ida's youth,
   And from the Queen's decease she brought her up.
   But when your sister came she won the heart
   Of Ida:  they were still together, grew
   (For so they said themselves) inosculated;
   Consonant chords that shiver to one note;
   One mind in all things:  yet my mother still
   Affirms your Psyche thieved her theories,
   And angled with them for her pupil's love:
   She calls her plagiarist; I know not what:
   But I must go:  I dare not tarry,' and light,
   As flies the shadow of a bird, she fled.

        Then murmured Florian gazing after her,
   'An open-hearted maiden, true and pure.
   If I could love, why this were she:  how pretty
   Her blushing was, and how she blushed again,
   As if to close with Cyril's random wish:
   Not like your Princess crammed with erring pride,
   Nor like poor Psyche whom she drags in tow.'

        'The crane,' I said, 'may chatter of the crane,
   The dove may murmur of the dove, but I
   An eagle clang an eagle to the sphere.
   My princess, O my princess! true she errs,
   But in her own grand way:  being herself
   Three times more noble than three score of men,
   She sees herself in every woman else,
   And so she wears her error like a crown
   To blind the truth and me:  for her, and her,
   Hebes are they to hand ambrosia, mix
   The nectar; but—ah she—whene'er she moves
   The Samian Herè rises and she speaks
   A Memnon smitten with the morning Sun.'

        So saying from the court we paced, and gained
   The terrace ranged along the Northern front,
   And leaning there on those balusters, high
   Above the empurpled champaign, drank the gale
   That blown about the foliage underneath,
   And sated with the innumerable rose,
   Beat balm upon our eyelids.  Hither came
   Cyril, and yawning 'O hard task,' he cried;
   'No fighting shadows here!  I forced a way
   Through opposition crabbed and gnarled.
   Better to clear prime forests, heave and thump
   A league of street in summer solstice down,
   Than hammer at this reverend gentlewoman.
   I knocked and, bidden, entered; found her there
   At point to move, and settled in her eyes
   The green malignant light of coming storm.
   Sir, I was courteous, every phrase well-oiled,
   As man's could be; yet maiden-meek I prayed
   Concealment:  she demanded who we were,
   And why we came?  I fabled nothing fair,
   But, your example pilot, told her all.
   Up went the hushed amaze of hand and eye.
   But when I dwelt upon your old affiance,
   She answered sharply that I talked astray.
   I urged the fierce inscription on the gate,
   And our three lives.  True—we had limed ourselves
   With open eyes, and we must take the chance.
   But such extremes, I told her, well might harm
   The woman's cause.  "Not more than now," she said,
   "So puddled as it is with favouritism."
   I tried the mother's heart.  Shame might befall
   Melissa, knowing, saying not she knew:
   Her answer was "Leave me to deal with that."
   I spoke of war to come and many deaths,
   And she replied, her duty was to speak,
   And duty duty, clear of consequences.
   I grew discouraged, Sir; but since I knew
   No rock so hard but that a little wave
   May beat admission in a thousand years,
   I recommenced; "Decide not ere you pause.
   I find you here but in the second place,
   Some say the third—the authentic foundress you.
   I offer boldly:  we will seat you highest:
   Wink at our advent:  help my prince to gain
   His rightful bride, and here I promise you
   Some palace in our land, where you shall reign
   The head and heart of all our fair she-world,
   And your great name flow on with broadening time
   For ever."  Well, she balanced this a little,
   And told me she would answer us today,
   meantime be mute:  thus much, nor more I gained.'

        He ceasing, came a message from the Head.
   'That afternoon the Princess rode to take
   The dip of certain strata to the North.
   Would we go with her? we should find the land
   Worth seeing; and the river made a fall
   Out yonder:'  then she pointed on to where
   A double hill ran up his furrowy forks
   Beyond the thick-leaved platans of the vale.

        Agreed to, this, the day fled on through all
   Its range of duties to the appointed hour.
   Then summoned to the porch we went.  She stood
   Among her maidens, higher by the head,
   Her back against a pillar, her foot on one
   Of those tame leopards.  Kittenlike he rolled
   And pawed about her sandal.  I drew near;
   I gazed.  On a sudden my strange seizure came
   Upon me, the weird vision of our house:
   The Princess Ida seemed a hollow show,
   Her gay-furred cats a painted fantasy,
   Her college and her maidens, empty masks,
   And I myself the shadow of a dream,
   For all things were and were not.  Yet I felt
   My heart beat thick with passion and with awe;
   Then from my breast the involuntary sigh
   Brake, as she smote me with the light of eyes
   That lent my knee desire to kneel, and shook
   My pulses, till to horse we got, and so
   Went forth in long retinue following up
   The river as it narrowed to the hills.

        I rode beside her and to me she said:
   'O friend, we trust that you esteemed us not
   Too harsh to your companion yestermorn;
   Unwillingly we spake.'  'No—not to her,'
   I answered, 'but to one of whom we spake
   Your Highness might have seemed the thing you say.'
   'Again?' she cried, 'are you ambassadresses
   From him to me? we give you, being strange,
   A license:  speak, and let the topic die.'

        I stammered that I knew him—could have wished—
   'Our king expects—was there no precontract?
   There is no truer-hearted—ah, you seem
   All he prefigured, and he could not see
   The bird of passage flying south but longed
   To follow:  surely, if your Highness keep
   Your purport, you will shock him even to death,
   Or baser courses, children of despair.'

        'Poor boy,' she said, 'can he not read—no books?
   Quoit, tennis, ball—no games? nor deals in that
   Which men delight in, martial exercise?
   To nurse a blind ideal like a girl,
   Methinks he seems no better than a girl;
   As girls were once, as we ourself have been:
   We had our dreams; perhaps he mixt with them:
   We touch on our dead self, nor shun to do it,
   Being other—since we learnt our meaning here,
   To lift the woman's fallen divinity
   Upon an even pedestal with man.'

        She paused, and added with a haughtier smile
   'And as to precontracts, we move, my friend,
   At no man's beck, but know ourself and thee,
   O Vashti, noble Vashti!  Summoned out
   She kept her state, and left the drunken king
   To brawl at Shushan underneath the palms.'

        'Alas your Highness breathes full East,' I said,
   'On that which leans to you.  I know the Prince,
   I prize his truth:  and then how vast a work
   To assail this gray preëminence of man!
   You grant me license; might I use it? think;
   Ere half be done perchance your life may fail;
   Then comes the feebler heiress of your plan,
   And takes and ruins all; and thus your pains
   May only make that footprint upon sand
   Which old-recurring waves of prejudice
   Resmooth to nothing:  might I dread that you,
   With only Fame for spouse and your great deeds
   For issue, yet may live in vain, and miss,
   Meanwhile, what every woman counts her due,
   Love, children, happiness?'
                              And she exclaimed,
   'Peace, you young savage of the Northern wild!
   What! though your Prince's love were like a God's,
   Have we not made ourself the sacrifice?
   You are bold indeed:  we are not talked to thus:
   Yet will we say for children, would they grew
   Like field-flowers everywhere! we like them well:
   But children die; and let me tell you, girl,
   Howe'er you babble, great deeds cannot die;
   They with the sun and moon renew their light
   For ever, blessing those that look on them.
   Children—that men may pluck them from our hearts,
   Kill us with pity, break us with ourselves—
   O—children—there is nothing upon earth
   More miserable than she that has a son
   And sees him err:  nor would we work for fame;
   Though she perhaps might reap the applause of Great,
   Who earns the one POU STO whence after-hands
   May move the world, though she herself effect
   But little:  wherefore up and act, nor shrink
   For fear our solid aim be dissipated
   By frail successors.  Would, indeed, we had been,
   In lieu of many mortal flies, a race
   Of giants living, each, a thousand years,
   That we might see our own work out, and watch
   The sandy footprint harden into stone.'

        I answered nothing, doubtful in myself
   If that strange Poet-princess with her grand
   Imaginations might at all be won.
   And she broke out interpreting my thoughts:

        'No doubt we seem a kind of monster to you;
   We are used to that:  for women, up till this
   Cramped under worse than South-sea-isle taboo,
   Dwarfs of the gynæceum, fail so far
   In high desire, they know not, cannot guess
   How much their welfare is a passion to us.
   If we could give them surer, quicker proof—
   Oh if our end were less achievable
   By slow approaches, than by single act
   Of immolation, any phase of death,
   We were as prompt to spring against the pikes,
   Or down the fiery gulf as talk of it,
   To compass our dear sisters' liberties.'

        She bowed as if to veil a noble tear;
   And up we came to where the river sloped
   To plunge in cataract, shattering on black blocks
   A breadth of thunder.  O'er it shook the woods,
   And danced the colour, and, below, stuck out
   The bones of some vast bulk that lived and roared
   Before man was.  She gazed awhile and said,
   'As these rude bones to us, are we to her
   That will be.'  'Dare we dream of that,' I asked,
   'Which wrought us, as the workman and his work,
   That practice betters?'  'How,' she cried, 'you love
   The metaphysics! read and earn our prize,
   A golden brooch:  beneath an emerald plane
   Sits Diotima, teaching him that died
   Of hemlock; our device; wrought to the life;
   She rapt upon her subject, he on her:
   For there are schools for all.'  'And yet' I said
   'Methinks I have not found among them all
   One anatomic.'  'Nay, we thought of that,'
   She answered, 'but it pleased us not:  in truth
   We shudder but to dream our maids should ape
   Those monstrous males that carve the living hound,
   And cram him with the fragments of the grave,
   Or in the dark dissolving human heart,
   And holy secrets of this microcosm,
   Dabbling a shameless hand with shameful jest,
   Encarnalize their spirits:  yet we know
   Knowledge is knowledge, and this matter hangs:
   Howbeit ourself, foreseeing casualty,
   Nor willing men should come among us, learnt,
   For many weary moons before we came,
   This craft of healing.  Were you sick, ourself
   Would tend upon you.  To your question now,
   Which touches on the workman and his work.
   Let there be light and there was light:  'tis so:
   For was, and is, and will be, are but is;
   And all creation is one act at once,
   The birth of light:  but we that are not all,
   As parts, can see but parts, now this, now that,
   And live, perforce, from thought to thought, and make
   One act a phantom of succession:  thus
   Our weakness somehow shapes the shadow, Time;
   But in the shadow will we work, and mould
   The woman to the fuller day.'
                                She spake
   With kindled eyes; we rode a league beyond,
   And, o'er a bridge of pinewood crossing, came
   On flowery levels underneath the crag,
   Full of all beauty.  'O how sweet' I said
   (For I was half-oblivious of my mask)
   'To linger here with one that loved us.'  'Yea,'
   She answered, 'or with fair philosophies
   That lift the fancy; for indeed these fields
   Are lovely, lovelier not the Elysian lawns,
   Where paced the Demigods of old, and saw
   The soft white vapour streak the crownèd towers
   Built to the Sun:'  then, turning to her maids,
   'Pitch our pavilion here upon the sward;
   Lay out the viands.'  At the word, they raised
   A tent of satin, elaborately wrought
   With fair Corinna's triumph; here she stood,
   Engirt with many a florid maiden-cheek,
   The woman-conqueror; woman-conquered there
   The bearded Victor of ten-thousand hymns,
   And all the men mourned at his side:  but we
   Set forth to climb; then, climbing, Cyril kept
   With Psyche, with Melissa Florian, I
   With mine affianced.  Many a little hand
   Glanced like a touch of sunshine on the rocks,
   Many a light foot shone like a jewel set
   In the dark crag:  and then we turned, we wound
   About the cliffs, the copses, out and in,
   Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names
   Of shales and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff,
   Amygdaloid and trachyte, till the Sun
   Grew broader toward his death and fell, and all
   The rosy heights came out above the lawns.

      The splendour falls on castle walls
         And snowy summits old in story:
      The long light shakes across the lakes,
         And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
   Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
   Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

      O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
         And thinner, clearer, farther going!
      O sweet and far from cliff and scar
         The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
   Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
   Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

      O love, they die in yon rich sky,
         They faint on hill or field or river:
      Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
         And grow for ever and for ever.
   Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
   And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

   'There sinks the nebulous star we call the Sun,
   If that hypothesis of theirs be sound'
   Said Ida; 'let us down and rest;' and we
   Down from the lean and wrinkled precipices,
   By every coppice-feathered chasm and cleft,
   Dropt through the ambrosial gloom to where below
   No bigger than a glow-worm shone the tent
   Lamp-lit from the inner.  Once she leaned on me,
   Descending; once or twice she lent her hand,
   And blissful palpitations in the blood,
   Stirring a sudden transport rose and fell.

        But when we planted level feet, and dipt
   Beneath the satin dome and entered in,
   There leaning deep in broidered down we sank
   Our elbows:  on a tripod in the midst
   A fragrant flame rose, and before us glowed
   Fruit, blossom, viand, amber wine, and gold.

        Then she, 'Let some one sing to us:  lightlier move
   The minutes fledged with music:' and a maid,
   Of those beside her, smote her harp, and sang.

      'Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
   Tears from the depth of some divine despair
   Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
   In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
   And thinking of the days that are no more.

      'Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
   That brings our friends up from the underworld,
   Sad as the last which reddens over one
   That sinks with all we love below the verge;
   So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

      'Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
   The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
   To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
   The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
   So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

      'Dear as remembered kisses after death,
   And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
   On lips that are for others; deep as love,
   Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
   O Death in Life, the days that are no more.'

        She ended with such passion that the tear,
   She sang of, shook and fell, an erring pearl
   Lost in her bosom:  but with some disdain
   Answered the Princess, 'If indeed there haunt
   About the mouldered lodges of the Past
   So sweet a voice and vague, fatal to men,
   Well needs it we should cram our ears with wool
   And so pace by:  but thine are fancies hatched
   In silken-folded idleness; nor is it
   Wiser to weep a true occasion lost,
   But trim our sails, and let old bygones be,
   While down the streams that float us each and all
   To the issue, goes, like glittering bergs of ice,
   Throne after throne, and molten on the waste
   Becomes a cloud:  for all things serve their time
   Toward that great year of equal mights and rights,
   Nor would I fight with iron laws, in the end
   Found golden:  let the past be past; let be
   Their cancelled Babels:  though the rough kex break
   The starred mosaic, and the beard-blown goat
   Hang on the shaft, and the wild figtree split
   Their monstrous idols, care not while we hear
   A trumpet in the distance pealing news
   Of better, and Hope, a poising eagle, burns
   Above the unrisen morrow:' then to me;
   'Know you no song of your own land,' she said,
   'Not such as moans about the retrospect,
   But deals with the other distance and the hues
   Of promise; not a death's-head at the wine.'

        Then I remembered one myself had made,
   What time I watched the swallow winging south
   From mine own land, part made long since, and part
   Now while I sang, and maidenlike as far
   As I could ape their treble, did I sing.

      'O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South,
   Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves,
   And tell her, tell her, what I tell to thee.

      'O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each,
   That bright and fierce and fickle is the South,
   And dark and true and tender is the North.

      'O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light
   Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill,
   And cheep and twitter twenty million loves.

      'O were I thou that she might take me in,
   And lay me on her bosom, and her heart
   Would rock the snowy cradle till I died.

      'Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love,
   Delaying as the tender ash delays
   To clothe herself, when all the woods are green?

      'O tell her, Swallow, that thy brood is flown:
   Say to her, I do but wanton in the South,
   But in the North long since my nest is made.

      'O tell her, brief is life but love is long,
   And brief the sun of summer in the North,
   And brief the moon of beauty in the South.

      'O Swallow, flying from the golden woods,
   Fly to her, and pipe and woo her, and make her mine,
   And tell her, tell her, that I follow thee.'

        I ceased, and all the ladies, each at each,
   Like the Ithacensian suitors in old time,
   Stared with great eyes, and laughed with alien lips,
   And knew not what they meant; for still my voice
   Rang false:  but smiling 'Not for thee,' she said,
   'O Bulbul, any rose of Gulistan
   Shall burst her veil:  marsh-divers, rather, maid,
   Shall croak thee sister, or the meadow-crake
   Grate her harsh kindred in the grass:  and this
   A mere love-poem!  O for such, my friend,
   We hold them slight:  they mind us of the time
   When we made bricks in Egypt.  Knaves are men,
   That lute and flute fantastic tenderness,
   And dress the victim to the offering up,
   And paint the gates of Hell with Paradise,
   And play the slave to gain the tyranny.
   Poor soul!  I had a maid of honour once;
   She wept her true eyes blind for such a one,
   A rogue of canzonets and serenades.
   I loved her.  Peace be with her.  She is dead.
   So they blaspheme the muse!  But great is song
   Used to great ends:  ourself have often tried
   Valkyrian hymns, or into rhythm have dashed
   The passion of the prophetess; for song
   Is duer unto freedom, force and growth
   Of spirit than to junketing and love.
   Love is it?  Would this same mock-love, and this
   Mock-Hymen were laid up like winter bats,
   Till all men grew to rate us at our worth,
   Not vassals to be beat, nor pretty babes
   To be dandled, no, but living wills, and sphered
   Whole in ourselves and owed to none.  Enough!
   But now to leaven play with profit, you,
   Know you no song, the true growth of your soil,
   That gives the manners of your country-women?'

        She spoke and turned her sumptuous head with eyes
   Of shining expectation fixt on mine.
   Then while I dragged my brains for such a song,
   Cyril, with whom the bell-mouthed glass had wrought,
   Or mastered by the sense of sport, began
   To troll a careless, careless tavern-catch
   Of Moll and Meg, and strange experiences
   Unmeet for ladies.  Florian nodded at him,
   I frowning; Psyche flushed and wanned and shook;
   The lilylike Melissa drooped her brows;
   'Forbear,' the Princess cried; 'Forbear, Sir' I;
   And heated through and through with wrath and love,
   I smote him on the breast; he started up;
   There rose a shriek as of a city sacked;
   Melissa clamoured 'Flee the death;' 'To horse'
   Said Ida; 'home! to horse!' and fled, as flies
   A troop of snowy doves athwart the dusk,
   When some one batters at the dovecote-doors,
   Disorderly the women.  Alone I stood
   With Florian, cursing Cyril, vext at heart,
   In the pavilion:  there like parting hopes
   I heard them passing from me:  hoof by hoof,
   And every hoof a knell to my desires,
   Clanged on the bridge; and then another shriek,
   'The Head, the Head, the Princess, O the Head!'
   For blind with rage she missed the plank, and rolled
   In the river.  Out I sprang from glow to gloom:
   There whirled her white robe like a blossomed branch
   Rapt to the horrible fall:  a glance I gave,
   No more; but woman-vested as I was
   Plunged; and the flood drew; yet I caught her; then
   Oaring one arm, and bearing in my left
   The weight of all the hopes of half the world,
   Strove to buffet to land in vain.  A tree
   Was half-disrooted from his place and stooped
   To wrench his dark locks in the gurgling wave
   Mid-channel.  Right on this we drove and caught,
   And grasping down the boughs I gained the shore.

        There stood her maidens glimmeringly grouped
   In the hollow bank.  One reaching forward drew
   My burthen from mine arms; they cried 'she lives:'
   They bore her back into the tent:  but I,
   So much a kind of shame within me wrought,
   Not yet endured to meet her opening eyes,
   Nor found my friends; but pushed alone on foot
   (For since her horse was lost I left her mine)
   Across the woods, and less from Indian craft
   Than beelike instinct hiveward, found at length
   The garden portals.  Two great statues, Art
   And Science, Caryatids, lifted up
   A weight of emblem, and betwixt were valves
   Of open-work in which the hunter rued
   His rash intrusion, manlike, but his brows
   Had sprouted, and the branches thereupon
   Spread out at top, and grimly spiked the gates.

        A little space was left between the horns,
   Through which I clambered o'er at top with pain,
   Dropt on the sward, and up the linden walks,
   And, tost on thoughts that changed from hue to hue,
   Now poring on the glowworm, now the star,
   I paced the terrace, till the Bear had wheeled
   Through a great arc his seven slow suns.
                                           A step
   Of lightest echo, then a loftier form
   Than female, moving through the uncertain gloom,
   Disturbed me with the doubt 'if this were she,'
   But it was Florian.  'Hist O Hist,' he said,
   'They seek us:  out so late is out of rules.
   Moreover "seize the strangers" is the cry.
   How came you here?' I told him:  'I' said he,
   'Last of the train, a moral leper, I,
   To whom none spake, half-sick at heart, returned.
   Arriving all confused among the rest
   With hooded brows I crept into the hall,
   And, couched behind a Judith, underneath
   The head of Holofernes peeped and saw.
   Girl after girl was called to trial:  each
   Disclaimed all knowledge of us:  last of all,
   Melissa:  trust me, Sir, I pitied her.
   She, questioned if she knew us men, at first
   Was silent; closer prest, denied it not:
   And then, demanded if her mother knew,
   Or Psyche, she affirmed not, or denied:
   From whence the Royal mind, familiar with her,
   Easily gathered either guilt.  She sent
   For Psyche, but she was not there; she called
   For Psyche's child to cast it from the doors;
   She sent for Blanche to accuse her face to face;
   And I slipt out:  but whither will you now?
   And where are Psyche, Cyril? both are fled:
   What, if together? that were not so well.
   Would rather we had never come!  I dread
   His wildness, and the chances of the dark.'

        'And yet,' I said, 'you wrong him more than I
   That struck him:  this is proper to the clown,
   Though smocked, or furred and purpled, still the clown,
   To harm the thing that trusts him, and to shame
   That which he says he loves:  for Cyril, howe'er
   He deal in frolic, as tonight—the song
   Might have been worse and sinned in grosser lips
   Beyond all pardon—as it is, I hold
   These flashes on the surface are not he.
   He has a solid base of temperament:
   But as the waterlily starts and slides
   Upon the level in little puffs of wind,
   Though anchored to the bottom, such is he.'

        Scarce had I ceased when from a tamarisk near
   Two Proctors leapt upon us, crying, 'Names:'
   He, standing still, was clutched; but I began
   To thrid the musky-circled mazes, wind
   And double in and out the boles, and race
   By all the fountains:  fleet I was of foot:
   Before me showered the rose in flakes; behind
   I heard the puffed pursuer; at mine ear
   Bubbled the nightingale and heeded not,
   And secret laughter tickled all my soul.
   At last I hooked my ankle in a vine,
   That claspt the feet of a Mnemosyne,
   And falling on my face was caught and known.

        They haled us to the Princess where she sat
   High in the hall:  above her drooped a lamp,
   And made the single jewel on her brow
   Burn like the mystic fire on a mast-head,
   Prophet of storm:  a handmaid on each side
   Bowed toward her, combing out her long black hair
   Damp from the river; and close behind her stood
   Eight daughters of the plough, stronger than men,
   Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain,
   And labour.  Each was like a Druid rock;
   Or like a spire of land that stands apart
   Cleft from the main, and wailed about with mews.

        Then, as we came, the crowd dividing clove
   An advent to the throne:  and therebeside,
   Half-naked as if caught at once from bed
   And tumbled on the purple footcloth, lay
   The lily-shining child; and on the left,
   Bowed on her palms and folded up from wrong,
   Her round white shoulder shaken with her sobs,
   Melissa knelt; but Lady Blanche erect
   Stood up and spake, an affluent orator.

        'It was not thus, O Princess, in old days:
   You prized my counsel, lived upon my lips:
   I led you then to all the Castalies;
   I fed you with the milk of every Muse;
   I loved you like this kneeler, and you me
   Your second mother:  those were gracious times.
   Then came your new friend:  you began to change—
   I saw it and grieved—to slacken and to cool;
   Till taken with her seeming openness
   You turned your warmer currents all to her,
   To me you froze:  this was my meed for all.
   Yet I bore up in part from ancient love,
   And partly that I hoped to win you back,
   And partly conscious of my own deserts,
   And partly that you were my civil head,
   And chiefly you were born for something great,
   In which I might your fellow-worker be,
   When time should serve; and thus a noble scheme
   Grew up from seed we two long since had sown;
   In us true growth, in her a Jonah's gourd,
   Up in one night and due to sudden sun:
   We took this palace; but even from the first
   You stood in your own light and darkened mine.
   What student came but that you planed her path
   To Lady Psyche, younger, not so wise,
   A foreigner, and I your countrywoman,
   I your old friend and tried, she new in all?
   But still her lists were swelled and mine were lean;
   Yet I bore up in hope she would be known:
   Then came these wolves:  they knew her:  they endured,
   Long-closeted with her the yestermorn,
   To tell her what they were, and she to hear:
   And me none told:  not less to an eye like mine
   A lidless watcher of the public weal,
   Last night, their mask was patent, and my foot
   Was to you:  but I thought again:  I feared
   To meet a cold "We thank you, we shall hear of it
   From Lady Psyche:" you had gone to her,
   She told, perforce; and winning easy grace
   No doubt, for slight delay, remained among us
   In our young nursery still unknown, the stem
   Less grain than touchwood, while my honest heat
   Were all miscounted as malignant haste
   To push my rival out of place and power.
   But public use required she should be known;
   And since my oath was ta'en for public use,
   I broke the letter of it to keep the sense.
   I spoke not then at first, but watched them well,
   Saw that they kept apart, no mischief done;
   And yet this day (though you should hate me for it)
   I came to tell you; found that you had gone,
   Ridden to the hills, she likewise:  now, I thought,
   That surely she will speak; if not, then I:
   Did she?  These monsters blazoned what they were,
   According to the coarseness of their kind,
   For thus I hear; and known at last (my work)
   And full of cowardice and guilty shame,
   I grant in her some sense of shame, she flies;
   And I remain on whom to wreak your rage,
   I, that have lent my life to build up yours,
   I that have wasted here health, wealth, and time,
   And talent, I—you know it—I will not boast:
   Dismiss me, and I prophesy your plan,
   Divorced from my experience, will be chaff
   For every gust of chance, and men will say
   We did not know the real light, but chased
   The wisp that flickers where no foot can tread.'

        She ceased:  the Princess answered coldly, 'Good:
   Your oath is broken:  we dismiss you:  go.
   For this lost lamb (she pointed to the child)
   Our mind is changed:  we take it to ourself.'

        Thereat the Lady stretched a vulture throat,
   And shot from crooked lips a haggard smile.
   'The plan was mine.  I built the nest' she said
   'To hatch the cuckoo.  Rise!' and stooped to updrag
   Melissa:  she, half on her mother propt,
   Half-drooping from her, turned her face, and cast
   A liquid look on Ida, full of prayer,
   Which melted Florian's fancy as she hung,
   A Niobëan daughter, one arm out,
   Appealing to the bolts of Heaven; and while
   We gazed upon her came a little stir
   About the doors, and on a sudden rushed
   Among us, out of breath as one pursued,
   A woman-post in flying raiment.  Fear
   Stared in her eyes, and chalked her face, and winged
   Her transit to the throne, whereby she fell
   Delivering sealed dispatches which the Head
   Took half-amazed, and in her lion's mood
   Tore open, silent we with blind surmise
   Regarding, while she read, till over brow
   And cheek and bosom brake the wrathful bloom
   As of some fire against a stormy cloud,
   When the wild peasant rights himself, the rick
   Flames, and his anger reddens in the heavens;
   For anger most it seemed, while now her breast,
   Beaten with some great passion at her heart,
   Palpitated, her hand shook, and we heard
   In the dead hush the papers that she held
   Rustle:  at once the lost lamb at her feet
   Sent out a bitter bleating for its dam;
   The plaintive cry jarred on her ire; she crushed
   The scrolls together, made a sudden turn
   As if to speak, but, utterance failing her,
   She whirled them on to me, as who should say
   'Read,' and I read—two letters—one her sire's.

        'Fair daughter, when we sent the Prince your way,
   We knew not your ungracious laws, which learnt,
   We, conscious of what temper you are built,
   Came all in haste to hinder wrong, but fell
   Into his father's hands, who has this night,
   You lying close upon his territory,
   Slipt round and in the dark invested you,
   And here he keeps me hostage for his son.'

        The second was my father's running thus:
   'You have our son:  touch not a hair of his head:
   Render him up unscathed:  give him your hand:
   Cleave to your contract:  though indeed we hear
   You hold the woman is the better man;
   A rampant heresy, such as if it spread
   Would make all women kick against their Lords
   Through all the world, and which might well deserve
   That we this night should pluck your palace down;
   And we will do it, unless you send us back
   Our son, on the instant, whole.'
                                   So far I read;
   And then stood up and spoke impetuously.

        'O not to pry and peer on your reserve,
   But led by golden wishes, and a hope
   The child of regal compact, did I break
   Your precinct; not a scorner of your sex
   But venerator, zealous it should be
   All that it might be:  hear me, for I bear,
   Though man, yet human, whatsoe'er your wrongs,
   From the flaxen curl to the gray lock a life
   Less mine than yours:  my nurse would tell me of you;
   I babbled for you, as babies for the moon,
   Vague brightness; when a boy, you stooped to me
   From all high places, lived in all fair lights,
   Came in long breezes rapt from inmost south
   And blown to inmost north; at eve and dawn
   With Ida, Ida, Ida, rang the woods;
   The leader wildswan in among the stars
   Would clang it, and lapt in wreaths of glowworm light
   The mellow breaker murmured Ida.  Now,
   Because I would have reached you, had you been
   Sphered up with Cassiopëia, or the enthroned
   Persephonè in Hades, now at length,
   Those winters of abeyance all worn out,
   A man I came to see you:  but indeed,
   Not in this frequence can I lend full tongue,
   O noble Ida, to those thoughts that wait
   On you, their centre:  let me say but this,
   That many a famous man and woman, town
   And landskip, have I heard of, after seen
   The dwarfs of presage:  though when known, there grew
   Another kind of beauty in detail
   Made them worth knowing; but in you I found
   My boyish dream involved and dazzled down
   And mastered, while that after-beauty makes
   Such head from act to act, from hour to hour,
   Within me, that except you slay me here,
   According to your bitter statute-book,
   I cannot cease to follow you, as they say
   The seal does music; who desire you more
   Than growing boys their manhood; dying lips,
   With many thousand matters left to do,
   The breath of life; O more than poor men wealth,
   Than sick men health—yours, yours, not mine—but half
   Without you; with you, whole; and of those halves
   You worthiest; and howe'er you block and bar
   Your heart with system out from mine, I hold
   That it becomes no man to nurse despair,
   But in the teeth of clenched antagonisms
   To follow up the worthiest till he die:
   Yet that I came not all unauthorized
   Behold your father's letter.'
                                On one knee
   Kneeling, I gave it, which she caught, and dashed
   Unopened at her feet:  a tide of fierce
   Invective seemed to wait behind her lips,
   As waits a river level with the dam
   Ready to burst and flood the world with foam:
   And so she would have spoken, but there rose
   A hubbub in the court of half the maids
   Gathered together:  from the illumined hall
   Long lanes of splendour slanted o'er a press
   Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes,
   And rainbow robes, and gems and gemlike eyes,
   And gold and golden heads; they to and fro
   Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, some pale,
   All open-mouthed, all gazing to the light,
   Some crying there was an army in the land,
   And some that men were in the very walls,
   And some they cared not; till a clamour grew
   As of a new-world Babel, woman-built,
   And worse-confounded:  high above them stood
   The placid marble Muses, looking peace.

        Not peace she looked, the Head:  but rising up
   Robed in the long night of her deep hair, so
   To the open window moved, remaining there
   Fixt like a beacon-tower above the waves
   Of tempest, when the crimson-rolling eye
   Glares ruin, and the wild birds on the light
   Dash themselves dead.  She stretched her arms and called
   Across the tumult and the tumult fell.

        'What fear ye, brawlers? am not I your Head?
   On me, me, me, the storm first breaks:  I dare
   All these male thunderbolts:  what is it ye fear?
   Peace! there are those to avenge us and they come:
   If not,—myself were like enough, O girls,
   To unfurl the maiden banner of our rights,
   And clad in iron burst the ranks of war,
   Or, falling, promartyr of our cause,
   Die:  yet I blame you not so much for fear:
   Six thousand years of fear have made you that
   From which I would redeem you:  but for those
   That stir this hubbub—you and you—I know
   Your faces there in the crowd—tomorrow morn
   We hold a great convention:  then shall they
   That love their voices more than duty, learn
   With whom they deal, dismissed in shame to live
   No wiser than their mothers, household stuff,
   Live chattels, mincers of each other's fame,
   Full of weak poison, turnspits for the clown,
   The drunkard's football, laughing-stocks of Time,
   Whose brains are in their hands and in their heels
   But fit to flaunt, to dress, to dance, to thrum,
   To tramp, to scream, to burnish, and to scour,
   For ever slaves at home and fools abroad.'

        She, ending, waved her hands:  thereat the crowd
   Muttering, dissolved:  then with a smile, that looked
   A stroke of cruel sunshine on the cliff,
   When all the glens are drowned in azure gloom
   Of thunder-shower, she floated to us and said:

        'You have done well and like a gentleman,
   And like a prince:  you have our thanks for all:
   And you look well too in your woman's dress:
   Well have you done and like a gentleman.
   You saved our life:  we owe you bitter thanks:
   Better have died and spilt our bones in the flood—
   Then men had said—but now—What hinders me
   To take such bloody vengeance on you both?—
   Yet since our father—Wasps in our good hive,
   You would-be quenchers of the light to be,
   Barbarians, grosser than your native bears—
   O would I had his sceptre for one hour!
   You that have dared to break our bound, and gulled
   Our servants, wronged and lied and thwarted us—
   I wed with thee!  I bound by precontract
   Your bride, your bondslave! not though all the gold
   That veins the world were packed to make your crown,
   And every spoken tongue should lord you.  Sir,
   Your falsehood and yourself are hateful to us:
   I trample on your offers and on you:
   Begone:  we will not look upon you more.
   Here, push them out at gates.'
                                 In wrath she spake.
   Then those eight mighty daughters of the plough
   Bent their broad faces toward us and addressed
   Their motion:  twice I sought to plead my cause,
   But on my shoulder hung their heavy hands,
   The weight of destiny:  so from her face
   They pushed us, down the steps, and through the court,
   And with grim laughter thrust us out at gates.

        We crossed the street and gained a petty mound
   Beyond it, whence we saw the lights and heard the voices murmuring.
   While I listened, came
   On a sudden the weird seizure and the doubt:
   I seemed to move among a world of ghosts;
   The Princess with her monstrous woman-guard,
   The jest and earnest working side by side,
   The cataract and the tumult and the kings
   Were shadows; and the long fantastic night
   With all its doings had and had not been,
   And all things were and were not.
                                    This went by
   As strangely as it came, and on my spirits
   Settled a gentle cloud of melancholy;
   Not long; I shook it off; for spite of doubts
   And sudden ghostly shadowings I was one
   To whom the touch of all mischance but came
   As night to him that sitting on a hill
   Sees the midsummer, midnight, Norway sun
   Set into sunrise; then we moved away.