The common men with rolling eyes; amazed
They glared upon the women, and aghast
The women stared at these, all silent, save
When armor clashed or jingled, while the day,
Descending, struck athwart the hall, and shot
A flying splendor out of brass and steel,
That o'er the statues leaped from head to head,
Now fired an angry Pallas on the helm,
Now set a wrathful Dian's moon on flame,
And now and then an echo started up,
And shuddering fled from room to room, and died Of fright in far apartments.
Of Ida sounded, issuing ordinance :
And me they bore up the broad stairs and through
The long-laid galleries past a hundred doors
To one deep chamber shut from sound, and due
To languid limbs and sickness; left me in it;
And others otherwhere they laid; and all
That afternoon a sound arose of hoof
And chariot, many a maiden passing home
Till happier times; but some were left of those
Held sagest, and the great lords out and in,
From those two hosts that lay beside the walls,
Walked at their will, and everything was changed.
Ask me no more: the moon may draw the sea;
The cloud may stoop from heaven and take the shape,
With fold to fold, of mountain or of cape;
But, O too fond, when have I answered thee?
Ask me no more.
Ask me no more: what answer should I give?
I love not hollow cheek or faded eye:
Yet, O my friend, I will not have thee die !
Ask me no more, lest I should bid thee live;
Ask me no more.
Ask me no more: thy fate and mine are sealed:
I strove against the stream and all in vain :
Let the great river take me to the main:
No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield;
So was their sanctuary violated,
So their fair college turned to hospital;
At first with all confusion: by and bye
Sweet order lived again with other laws:
A kindlier influence reigned; and everywhere
Low voices with the ministering hand
Hung round the sick: the maidens came, they talked,
They sang, they read: till she not fair, began
To gather light, and she that was, became
Her former beauty treble; and to and fro
With books, with flowers, with Angel offices,
Like creatures native unto gracious act,
And in their own clear element, they moved.
But sadness on the soul of Ida fell,
And hatred of her weakness, blent with shame.
Old studies failed: seldom she spoke; but oft
Clomb to the roofs, and gazed alone for hours
On that disastrous leaguer, swarms of men
Darkening her female field: void was her use ;
And she as one that climbs a peak to gaze
O'er land and main, and sees a great black cloud
Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night,
Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore,
And suck the blinding splendor from the sand,
And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn
Expunge the world: so fared she gazing there;
So blackened all her world in secret, blank
And waste it seemed and vain; till down she came
And found fair peace once more among the sick.
And twilight dawned; and morn by morn the lark Shot up and shrilled in flickering gyres, but I Lay silent in the muffled cage of life:
And twilight gloomed; and broader grown the bowers Drew the great night into themselves, and Heaven Star after star arose and fell, but I,
Deeper than those weird doubts could reach me, lay
Quite sundered from the moving Universe,
Nor knew what eye was on me nor the hand
That nursed me, more than infants in their sleep.
But Psyche tended Florian: with her oft
Melissa came; for Blanche had gone, but left
Her child among us, willing she should keep
Court-favor: here and there the small bright head,
A light of healing, glanced about the couch,
Or through the parted silks the tender face
Peeped, shining in upon the wounded man
With blush and smile, a medicine in themselves
To wile the length from languorous hours and draw
The sting from pain; nor seemed it strange that soon
He rose up whole, and those fair charities
Joined at her side: nor stranger seemed that hearts
So gentle, so employed, should close in love,
Than when two dew-drops on the petal shake
To the same sweet air and tremble deeper down,
And slip at once all-fragrant into one.
Less prosperously the second suit obtained
At first with Psyche. Not though Blanche had sworn
That after that dark night among the fields,
She needs must wed him for her own good name;
Not though he built upon the babe restored;
Nor though she liked him, yielded she, but feared
To incense the Head once more; till on a day
When Cyril pleaded, Ida came behind
Seen but of Psyche. On her foot she hung
A moment and she heard, at which her face
A little flushed and she past on; but each
Assumed from thence a half-consent involved
In stillness, plighted troth, and were at peace.
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