Rose up, and read the statutes, such as these: We enter'd on the boards: and "Now" she cried "Ye are green wood, see ye warp not. Look, our hall! Our statues !-not of those that men desire, Nor stunted squaws of West or East; but she The Carian Artemisia strong in war, The Rhodope, that built the pyramid, Drink deep, until the habits of the slave, The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite And slander, die. Better not be at all. Than not be noble. Leave us: you may go: To-day the Lady Psyche will harangue For they press in from all the provinces, She spoke, and bowing waved Dismissal back again we crost the court There sat along the forms, like morning doves A patient range of pupils; she herself A quick brunette, well-moulded, falcon-eyed, That whisper'd "Asses' ears," among the sedge, "My sister." "Comely too by all that's fair" Said Cyril. "O hush, hush!" and she began. "This world was once a fluid haze of light, Till toward the centre set the starry tides, And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast Raw from the prime, and crushing down his mate; As yet we find in barbarous isles, and here Among the lowest." Thereupon she took A bird's-eye-view of all the ungracious past; Glanced at the legendary Amazon As emblematic of a nobler age; Appraised the Lycian custom, spoke of those When some respect, however slight, was paid However then commenced the dawn: a beam Of promise; fruit would follow. Deep, indeed, Disyoke their necks from custom, and assert None lordlier than themselves but that which made Woman and man. She had founded; they must build. Here might they learn whatever men were taught: Besides the brain was like the hand, and grew And not the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay, Nor those horn-handed breakers of the glebe, But Homer, Plato, Verulam; even so With woman: and in arts of government The peasant Joan and others; arts of grace And, last not least, she who had left her place, And bow'd her state to them, that they might grow To use and power on this Oasis, lapt In the arms of leisure, sacred from the blight Of ancient influence and scorn. At last She rose upon a wind of prophecy Dilating on the future; "everywhere Two heads in council, two beside the hearth, Two in the tangled business of the world, Two in the liberal offices of life, Two plummets dropt for one to sound the abyss Of science, and the secrets of the mind: Musician, painter, sculptor, critic, more: And everywhere the broad and bounteous Earth Should bear a double growth of those rare souls, |