As are the roots of earth and base of all; Man for the sword and for the needle she: Man with the head and woman with the heart: All else confusion. Look you! the gray mare Is ill to live with, when her whinny shrills Mix with his hearth: but you-she 's yet a colt Take, break her: strongly groom'd and straitly curb'd She might not rank with those detestable That let the bantling scald at home, and brawl Their rights or wrongs like potherbs in the street. I like her none the less for rating at her! Besides, the woman wed is not as we, But suffers change of frame. A lusty brace Of twins may weed her of her folly. Boy, Is woman's wisdom.' Thus the hard old king: I took my leave, for it was nearly noon: I pored upon her letter which I held, And on the little clause 'take not his life :' That one should fight with shadows and should fall; And like a flash the weird affection came: King, camp and college turn'd to hollow shows; I seem'd to move in old memorial tilts, And riders front to front, until they closed In conflict with the crash of shivering points, And thunder. Yet it seem'd a dream, I dream'd Of fighting. On his haunches rose the steed, And into fiery splinters leapt the lance, And out of stricken helmets sprang the fire. Part sat like rocks: part reel'd but kept their seats: The large blows rain'd, as here and everywhere He rode the mellay, lord of the ringing lists, And all the plain,-brand, mace, and shaft, and shieldShock'd, like an iron-clanging anvil bang'd With hammers; till I thought, can this be he From Gama's dwarfish loins? if this be so, The mother makes us most-and in my dream I glanced aside, and saw the palace-front Alive with fluttering scarfs and ladies' eyes, T With Psyche's babe, was Ida watching us, A single band of gold about her hair, Like a Saint's glory up in heaven: but she Made at me thro' the press, and, staggering back With stroke on stroke the horse and horseman, came As comes a pillar of electric cloud, Flaying the roofs and sucking up the drains, And shadowing down the champain till it strikes On a wood, and takes, and breaks, and cracks, and splits, And twists the grain with such a roar that Earth Reels, and the herdsmen cry; for everything Gave way before him: only Florian, he That loved me closer than his own right eye, |