In Angel instincts, breathing Paradise,
Interpreter between the Gods and men,
Who looked all native to her place, and yet
On tiptoe seemed to touch upon a sphere
Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce
Swayed to her from their orbits as they moved
And girdled her with music. Happy he
With such a mother! faith in womankind
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high
Comes easy to him, and though he trip and fall,
He shall not blind his soul with clay."
Said Ida, tremulously, "so all unlike -
It seems you love to cheat yourself with words:
This mother is your model. I have heard
Of your strange doubts: they well might be :
A mockery to my own self. Never, Prince;
You cannot love me."
"Nay, but thee," I said, "From year-long poring on thy pictured eyes, Ere seen I loved, and loved thee seen, and saw Thee woman through the crust of iron moods That masked thee from men's reverence up, and forced Sweet love on pranks of saucy boyhood: now
Given back to life, to life indeed, through thee,
Indeed I love the new day comes, the light
Dearer for night, as dearer thou for faults
Lived over: lift thine eyes; my doubts are dead,
My haunting sense of hollow shows: the change,
This truthful change in thee has killed it. Dear,
Look up and let thy nature strike on mine
Like yonder morning on the blind half-world;
Approach and fear not; breathe upon my brows;
In that fine air I tremble, all the past
Melts mist-like into this bright hour, and this
Is morn to more, and all the rich to come
Reels, as the golden Autumn woodland reels
Athwart the smoke of burning weeds. Forgive me,
I waste my heart in signs: let be. My bride,
My wife, my life. O we will walk this world,
Yoked in all exercise of noble end,
And so through those dark gates across the wild
That no man knows. Indeed I love thee; come,
Yield thyself up: my hopes and thine are one :
Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself,
Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me."
So closed our tale, of which I give you all
The random scheme as wildly as it rose:
The words are mostly mine: for when we ceased
There came a minute's pause, and Walter said,
"I wish she had not yielded!" then to me,
What, if you drest it up poetically?"
So prayed the men, the women: I gave assent:
Yet how to bind the scattered scheme of seven
Together in one sheaf? What style could suit?
The men required that I should give throughout
The sort of mock-heroic gigantesque,
With which we bantered little Lilia first:
The women and perhaps they felt their power,
For something in the ballads which they sang,
Or in their silent influence as they sat,
Had ever seemed to wrestle with burlesque,
And drove us, last, to quite a solemn close -
They hated banter, wished for something real,
A gallant fight, a noble princess — why
Not make her true-heroic — true-sublime?
Or all, they said, as earnest as the close?
Which yet with such a framework scarce could be.
Then rose a little feud betwixt the two,
Betwixt the mockers and the realists:
And I, betwixt them both, to please them both,
And yet to give the story as it rose,
I moved as in a strange diagonal,
And maybe neither pleased myself nor them.
But Lilia pleased me, for she took no part In our dispute: the sequel of the tale
Had touched her; and she sat, she plucked the grass, She flung it from her, thinking: last, she fixt
A showery glance upon her aunt, and said, "You
tell us what we are;" who might have told, For she was crammed with theories out of books, But that there rose a shout: the gates were closed At sunset, and the crowd were swarming now, To take their leave, about the garden rails.
So I and some went out to these: we climbed
The slope to Vivian-place, and turning saw
The happy valleys half in light and half
Far-shadowing from the west, a land of peace:
Gray halls alone
among their massive groves;
Trim hamlets; here and there a rustic tower Half-lost in belts of hop and breadths of wheat; The shimmering glimpses of a stream; the seas; A red sail, or a white; and far beyond,
Imagined more than seen, the skirts of France.
"Look there, a garden!" said my college friend, The Tory member's elder son, "and there! God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off, And keeps our Britain, whole within herself, A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled Some sense of duty, something of a faith,
Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made,
Some patient force to change them when we will,
Some civic manhood firm against the crowd-
But yonder, whiff! there comes a sudden heat,
The gravest citizen seems to lose his head,
The king is scared, the soldier will not fight,
The little boys begin to shoot and stab,
A kingdom topples over with a shriek
Like an old woman, and down rolls the world
In mock heroics stranger than our own;
Revolts, republics, revolutions, all
No graver than a schoolboys' barring out;
Too comic for the solemn things they are,
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