VI.

My dream had never died or lived again.
As in some mystic middle state I lay;
Seeing I saw not, hearing not I heard;
Though, if I saw not, yet they told me all
So often, that I speak as having seen.

For so it seemed, or so they said to me,

That all things grew more tragic and more strange;
That when our side was vanquished, and my cause
Forever lost, there went up a great cry,

The Prince is slain. My father heard and ran
In on the lists, and there unlaced my casque

And grovelled on my body, and after him
Came Psyche, sorrowing for Aglaïa.

But high upon the palace Ida stood

With Psyche's babe in arm: there on the roofs
Like that great dame of Lapidoth she sang:

"Our enemies have fallen, have fallen: the seed,
The little seed they laughed at in the dark,
Has risen and cleft the soil, and grown a bulk
Of spanless girth, that lays on every side
A thousand arms and rushes to the Sun.

"Our enemies have fallen, have fallen: they came; The leaves were wet with women's tears: they heard A noise of songs they would not understand.

They marked it with the red cross to the fall,

And would have strown it, and are fallen themselves.

"Our enemies have fallen, have fallen: they came, The woodmen with their axes: lo the tree! But we will make it fagots for the hearth, And shape it plank and beam for roof and floor, And boats and bridges for the use of men.

"Our enemies have fallen, have fallen: they struck; With their own blows they hurt themselves, nor knew There dwelt an iron nature in the grain:

The glittering axe was broken in their arms,

Their arms were shattered to the shoulder blade.

"Our enemies have fallen, but this shall grow
A night of Summer from the heat, a breadth
Of Autumn, dropping fruits of power; and rolled
With music in the growing breeze of Time,
The tops shall strike from star to star, the fangs
Shall move the stony bases of the world.

"And now, O maids, behold our sanctuary Is violate, our laws broken: fear we not

To break them more in their behoof, whose arms
Championed our cause and won it with a day
Blanched in our annals, and perpetual feast,
When dames and heroines of the golden year
Shall strip a hundred hollows bare of Spring,
To rain an April of ovation round

Their statues, borne aloft, the three: but come,
We will be liberal, since our rights are won.
Let them not lie in the tents, with coarse mankind,
Ill nurses; but descend, and proffer these,

The brethren of our blood and cause, that there

Lie bruised and maimed, the tender ministries
Of female hands and hospitality."

She spoke, and with the babe yet in her arms, Descending, burst the great bronze valves, and led

A hundred maids in train across the Park.

Some cowled, and some bare-headed, on they came,
Their feet in flowers, her loveliest: by them went
The enamored air sighing, and on their curls
From the high tree the blossom wavering fell,
And over them the tremulous isles of light
Slided, they moving under shade: but Blanche
At distance followed: so they came: anon

Through open field into the lists they wound
Timorously; and as the leader of the herd

That holds a stately fretwork to the Sun,
And followed up by a hundred airy does,
Steps with a tender foot, light as on air,
The lovely, lordly creature floated on

To where her wounded brethren lay; there stayed;
Knelt on one knee, the child on one,

and prest

Their hands, and called them dear deliverers,

And happy warriors, and immortal names,

And said, "You shall not lie in the tents, but here, And nursed by those for whom you fought, and served With female hands and hospitality."

Then, whether moved by this, or was it chance, She past my way. Up started from my side

The old lion, glaring with his whelpless eye,

Silent; but when she saw me lying stark,
Dishelmed and mute, and motionlessly pale,
Cold even to her, she sighed; and when she saw
The haggard father's face and reverend beard

Of grisly twine, all dabbled with the blood
Of his own son, shuddered, a twitch of pain
- Tortured her mouth, and o'er her forehead past
A shadow, and her hue changed, and she said:
"He saved my life: my brother slew him for it."
No more at which the king in bitter scorn
Drew from my neck the painting and the tress,
And held them up: she saw them, and a day
Rose from the distance on her memory,

When the good queen, her mother, shore the tress
With kisses, ere the days of Lady Blanche:
And then once more she looked at my pale face:
Till understanding all the foolish work

Of Fancy, and the bitter close of all,

Her iron will was broken in her mind;

Her noble heart was molten in her breast;

She bowed, she set the child on the earth; she laid

A feeling finger on my brows, and presently

"O Sire," she said, "he lives: he is not dead:

O let me have him with my brethren here

In our own palace: we will tend on him