"Let me die too," said Cyril, "having seen And heard the Lady Psyche."

I struck in:
"Albeit so mask'd, Madam, I love the truth;
Receive it; and in me behold the Prince
Your countryman, affianced years ago
To the Lady Ida: here, for here she was,
And thus (what other way was left?) I came."
"O Sir, O Prince, I have no country; none;
If any, this; but none. Whate'er I was
Disrooted, what I am is grafted here.
Affianced, Sir? love-whispers may not breathe
Within this vestal limit, and how should I,
Who am not mine, say, live: the thunderbolt
Hangs silent; but prepare: I speak; it falls."
"Yet pause," I said: "for that inscription there,
I think no more of deadly lurks therein,
Than in a clapper clapping in a garth,

To scare the fowl from fruit: if more there be,
If more and acted on, what follows? war;
Your own work marr'd: for this your Academe,
Whichever side be Victor, in the halloo
Will topple to the trumpet down, and pass
With all fair theories only made to gild

A stormless summer." "Let the Princess judge
Of that," she said: "farewell, Sir-and to you.
I shudder at the sequel, but I go."

"Are you that Lady Psyche," I rejoin'd, "The fifth in line from that old Florian, Yet hangs his portrait in my father's hall (The gaunt old Baron with his beetle brow Sun-shaded in the heat of dusty fights) As he bestrode my Grandsire, when he fell, And all else fled: we point to it, and we say, The loyal warmth of Florian is not cold, But branches current yet in kindred veins." "Are you that Psyche," Florian added, "she With whom I sang about the morning hills, Flung ball, flew kite, and raced the purple fly, And snared the squirrel of the glen? are you That Psyche, wont to bind my throbbing brow, To smooth my pillow, mix the foaming draught Of fever, tell me pleasant tales, and read My sickness down to happy dreams? are you That brother-sister Psyche, both in one? You were that Psyche, but what are you now?" "You are that Psyche," Cyril said, "for whom I would be that forever which I seem, Woman, if I might sit beside your feet, And glean your scatter'd sapience."

Then once more,

"Are you that Lady Psyche," I began,
"That on her bridal morn before she past
From all her old companions, when the king
Kiss'd her pale cheek, declared that ancient ties
Would still be dear beyond the southern hills;
That were there any of our people there
In want or peril, there was one to hear
And help them: look! for such are these and I."
"Are you that Psyche," Florian ask'd, "to whom,
In gentler days, your arrow-wounded fawn
Came flying while you sat beside the well?
The creature laid his muzzle on your lap,
And sobb'd, and you sobb'd with it, and the blood
Was sprinkled on your kirtle, and you wept.
That was fawn's blood, not brother's, yet you wept.
O by the bright head of my little niece,
You were that Psyche, and what are you now?"
"You are that Psyche," Cyril said again,
"The mother of the sweetest little maid,
That ever crow'd for kisses."

"Out upon it!"

She answer'd, "peace! and why should I not play
The Spartan Mother with emotion, be
The Lucius Junius Brutus of my kind?
Him you call great: he for the common weal,
The fading politics of mortal Rome,

As I might slay this child, if good need were,
Slew both his sons: and I, shall I, on whom
The secular emancipation turns

Of half this world, be swerved from right to save
A prince, a brother? a little will I yield.
Best so, perchance, for us, and well for you.
O hard, when love and duty clash! I fear
My conscience will not count me fleckless; yet-
Hear my conditions: promise (otherwise
You perish) as you came to slip away,
To-day, to-morrow, soon: it shall be said,
These women are too barbarous, would not learn;
They fled, who might have shamed us: promise, all."

What could we else, we promised each; and she, Like some wild creature newly caged, commenced A to-and-fro, so pacing till she paused By Florian; holding out her lily arms Took both his hands, and smiling faintly said: "I knew you at the first; tho' you have grown You scarce have alter'd: I am sad and glad To see you, Florian. I give thee to death, My brother! it was duty spoke, not I. My needful seeming harshness, pardon it. Our mother, is she well?"

With that she kiss'd His forehead, then, a moment after, clung About him, and betwixt them blossom'd up From out a common vein of memory Sweet household talk, and phrases of the hearth, And far allusion, till the gracious dews Began to glisten and to fall and while They stood, so rapt, we gazing, came a voice, "I brought a message here from Lady Blanche." Back started she, and turning round we saw The Lady Blanche's daughter where she stood, Melissa, with her hand upon the lock. A rosy blonde, and in a college gown, That clad her like an April daffodilly (Her mother's color) with her lips apart, And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes, As bottom agates seen to wave and float In crystal currents of clear morning seas.

So stood that same fair creature at the door.
Then Lady Psyche, "Ah-Melissa-you!
You heard us ?" and Melissa, "O pardon me!
I heard, I could not help it, did not wish:
But, dearest Lady, pray you fear me not,
Nor think I bear that heart within my breast,.
To give three gallant gentlemen to death."
"I trust you," said the other, "for we two
Were always friends, none closer, elm and vine:
But yet your mother's jealous temperament-
Let not your prudence, dearest, drowse, or prove
The Danaïd of a leaky vase, for fear

This whole foundation ruin, and I lose
My honor, these their lives." "Ah, fear me not,"
Replied Melissa; "no-I would not tell,
No, not for all Aspasia's cleverness,
No, not to answer, Madam, all those hard things
That Sheba came to ask of Solomon."
"Be it so," the other, "that we still may lead
The new light up, and culminate in peace,
For Solomon may come to Sheba yet."
Said Cyril, "Madam, he the wisest man
Feasted the woman wisest then, in halls
Of Lebanonian cedar: nor should you
(Tho' Madam you should answer, we would ask)
Less welcome find among us, if you came
Among us, debtors for our lives to you,
Myself for something more." He said not what,
But "Thanks," she answer'd, "go: we have been

too long

Together: keep your hoods about the face;
They do so that affect abstraction here.
Speak little; mix not with the rest; and hold

Your promise: all, I trust, may yet be well."

We turn'd to go, but Cyril took the child, And held her round the knees against his waist, And blew the swoll'n cheek of a trumpeter, While Psyche watch'd them, smiling, and the child Push'd her flat hand against his face and laugh'd; And thus our conference closed.

For half the day thro' stately theatres
Bench'd crescent-wise. In each we sat, we heard
The grave Professor. On the lecture slate
The circle rounded under female hands
With flawless demonstration: follow'd then
A classic lecture, rich in sentiment,
With scraps of thunderous Epic lilted out
By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies
And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long
That on the stretch'd forefinger of all Time
Sparkle forever: then we dipt in all
That treats of whatsoever is, the state,
The total chronicles of man, the mind,
The morals, something of the frame, the rock,
The star, the bird, the fish, the shell, the flower,
Electric, chemic laws, and all the rest,
And whatsoever can be taught and known;
Till like three horses that have broken fence,
And glutted all night long breast-deep in corn,
We issued gorged with knowledge, and I spoke :
"Why, Sirs, they do all this as well as we."
"They hunt old trails," said Cyril, "very well;
But when did woman ever yet invent ?"
"Ungracious!" answer'd Florian, "have you learnt
No more from Psyche's lecture, you that talk'd
The trash that made me sick, and almost sad?"
"O trash," he said, "but with a kernel in it.
Should I not call her wise, who made me wise?
And learnt? I learnt more from her in a flash,
Than if my brainpan were an empty hull,
And every Muse tumbled a science in.
A thousand hearts lie fallow in these halls,
And round these halls a thousand baby loves
Fly twanging headless arrows at the hearts,
Whence follows many a vacant pang: but O
With me, Sir, enter'd in the bigger boy,
The Head of all the golden-shafted firm,
The long-limb'd lad that had a Psyche too;
He cleft me thro' the stomacher; and now
What think you of it, Florian? do I chase
The substance or the shadow? will it hold?
I have no sorcerer's malison on me,
No ghostly hauntings like his Highness. I
Flatter myself that always everywhere

I know the substance when I see it. Well,
Are castles shadows? Three of them? Is she
The sweet proprietress a shadow? If not,
Shall those three castles patch my tatter'd coat?
For dear are those three castles to my wants,
And dear is sister Psyche to my heart,
And two dear things are one of double worth,
And much I might have said, but that my zone
Unmann'd me: then the Doctors! O to hear
The Doctors! O to watch the thirsty plants
Imbibing! once or twice I thought to roar,
To break my chain, to shake my mane: but thou,
Modulate me, Soul of mincing mimicry!
Make liquid treble of that bassoon, my throat;
Abase those eyes that ever loved to meet
Star-sisters answering under crescent brows;
Abate the stride, which speaks of man, and loose
A flying charm of blushes o'er this cheek,
Where they like swallows coming out of time
Will wonder why they came; but hark the bell
For dinner, let us go!"

And in we stream'd
Among the columns, pacing staid and still
By twos and threes, till all from end to end
With beauties every shade of brown and fair,
In colors gayer than the morning mist,
The long hall glitter'd like a bed of flowers.

At last a solemn grace
Concluded, and we sought the gardens: there
One walk'd reciting by herself, and one

In this hand held a volume as to read,
And smoothed a petted peacock down with that:
Some to a low song oar'd a shallop by,

Or under arches of the marble bridge

Hung, shadow'd from the heat: some hid and sought
In the orange thickets: others tost a ball
Above the fountain-jets, and back again
With laughter: others lay about the lawns,
Of the older sort, and murmur'd that their May
Was passing: what was learning unto them?
They wish'd to marry; they could rule a house;
Men hated learned women: but we three
Sat muffled like the Fates; and often came
Melissa hitting all we saw with shafts

Of gentle satire, kin to charity,

That harm'd not: then day droopt; the chapel bells
Call'd us: we left the walks; we mixt with those
Six hundred maidens clad in purest white,
Before two streams of light from wall to wall,
While the great organ almost burst his pipes,
Groaning for power, and rolling thro' the court
A long melodious thunder to the sound
Of solemn psalms, and silver litanies,
The work of Ida, to call down from Heaven
A blessing on her labors for the world.

There while we stood beside the fount, and watch'd Or seem'd to watch the dancing bubble, approach'd Melissa, tinged with wan from lack of sleep, Or grief, and glowing round her dewy eyes The circled Iris of a night of tears;

"And fly," she cried, "O fly, while yet you may! My mother knows:" and when I ask'd her "how," "My fault," she wept, "my fault! and yet not mine; Yet mine in part. O hear me, pardon me. My mother, 't is her wont from night to night

Her back against a pillar, her foot on one
Of those tame leopards. Kittenlike he roll'd
And paw'd about her sandal. I drew near:

I gazed. On a sudden my strange seizure came
Upon me, the weird vision of our house:
The Princess Ida seem'd a hollow show,
Her gay-furr'd cats a painted fantasy,
Her college and her maidens, empty masks,
And I myself the shadow of a dream,
For all things were and were not. Yet I felt
My heart beat thick with passion and with awe;
Then from my breast the involuntary sigh
Brake, as she smote me with the light of eyes
That lent my knee desire to kneel, and shook
My pulses, till to horse we got, and so
Went forth in long retinue following up
The river as it narrow'd to the hills.

"Alas your Highness breathes full East," I said, "On that which leans to you. I know the Prince, I prize his truth: and then how vast a work To assail this gray pre-eminence of man! You grant me license; might I use it? think, Ere half be done perchance your life may fail; Then comes the feebler heiress of your plan, And takes and ruins all; and thus your pains May only make that footprint upon sand Which old-recurring waves of prejudice Resmooth to nothing: might I dread that you, With only Fame for spouse and your great deeds For issue, yet may live in vain, and miss, Meanwhile, what every woman counts her due, Love, children, happiness?"

And she exclaim'd, "Peace, you young savage of the Northern wild! What! tho' your Prince's love were like a God's, Have we not made ourself the sacrifice?

You are bold indeed: we are not talk'd to thus: Yet will we say for children, would they grew,

Like field-flowers everywhere! we like them well:
But children die; and let me tell you, girl,
Howe'er you babble, great deeds cannot die:
They with the sun and moon renew their light
Forever, blessing those that look on them.
Children-that men may pluck them from our hearts,
Kill us with pity, break us with ourselves-
O-children-there is nothing upon earth
More miserable than she that has a son

And sees him err: nor would we work for fame;
Tho' she perhaps might reap the applause of Great,
Who learns the one POU STO whence afterhands
May move the world, tho' she herself effect
But little wherefore up and act, nor shrink
For fear our solid aim be dissipated

By frail successors. Would, indeed, we had been,
In lieu of many mortal flies, a race

Of giants living, each, a thousand years,
That we might see our own work out, and watch
The sandy footprint harden into stone."

I answer'd nothing, doubtful in myself If that strange Poet-princess with her grand Imaginations might at all be won. And she broke out interpreting my thoughts:

"No doubt we seem a kind of monster to you; We are used to that: for women, up till this Cramp'd under worse than South-sea-isle taboo, Dwarfs of the gynæceum, fail so far

In high desire, they know not, cannot guess
How much their welfare is a passion to us.
If we could give them surer, quicker proof-
O if our end were less achievable

By slow approaches, than by single act
Of immolation, any phase of death,

We were as prompt to spring against the pikes,
Or down the fiery gulf as talk of it,
To compass our dear sisters' liberties."

She bow'd as if to veil a noble tear;
And up we came to where the river sloped
To plunge in cataract, shattering on black blocks
A breath of thunder. O'er it shook the woods,
And danced the color, and, below, stuck out
The bones of some vast bulk that lived and roar'd
Before man was. She gazed awhile and said,
"As these rude bones to us, are we to her
That will be." "Dare we dream of that," I ask'd,
"Which wrought us, as the workman and his work,
That practice betters ?" "How," she cried, "you love
The metaphysics! read and earn our prize,
A golden broach: beneath an emerald plane
Sits Diotima, teaching him that died

Of hemlock; our device; wrought to the life;
She rapt upon her subject, he on her:
For there are schools for all." "And yet," I said,
"Methinks I have not found among them all
One anatomic." "Nay, we thought of that,"
She answer'd, "but it pleased us not: in truth
We shudder but to dream our maids should ape
Those monstrous males that carve the living hound,
And cram him with the fragments of the grave,
Or in the dark dissolving human heart,
And holy secrets of this microcosm,
Dabbling a shameless hand with shameful jest,
Encarnalize their spirits: yet we know
Knowledge is knowledge, and this matter hangs :
Howbeit ourself, foreseeing casualty,

Nor willing men should come among us, learnt,
For many weary moons before we came,
This craft of healing. Were you sick, ourself
Would tend upon you. To your question now,
Which touches on the workman and his work.
Let there be light and there was light: 't is so:
For was, and is, and will be, are but is;
And all creation is one act at once,
The birth of light: but we that are not all,

As parts, can see but parts, now this, now that, And live, perforce, from thought to thought, and make

One act a phantom of succession: thus

Our weakness somehow shapes the shadow, Time;
But in the shadow will we work, and mould
The woman to the fuller day."

She spake With kindled eyes: we rode a league beyond, And, o'er a bridge of pinewood crossing, came On flowery levels underneath the crag, Full of all beauty. "O how sweet," I said, (For I was half-oblivious of my mask,)

"To linger here with one that loved us." "Yea,"

She answer'd, "or with fair philosophies
That lift the fancy; for indeed these fields
Are lovely, lovelier not the Elysian lawns,
Where paced the Demigods of old, and saw
The soft white vapor streak the crowned towers
Built to the Sun:" then, turning to her maids,
"Pitch our pavilion here upon the sward;
Lay out the viands." At the word, they raised
A tent of satin, elaborately wrought
With fair Corinna's triumph; here she stood,
Engirt with many a florid maiden-cheek,
The woman-conqueror: woman-conquer'd there
The bearded Victor of ten-thousand hymns,
And all the men mourn'd at his side: but we
Set forth to climb; then, climbing, Cyril kept
With Psyche, with Melissa Florian, I
With mine affianced. Many a little hand
Glanced like a touch of sunshine on the rocks,
Many a light foot shone like a jewel set

In the dark crag: and then we turn'd, we wound
About the cliffs, the copses, out and in,
Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names
Of shale and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff,
Amygdaloid and trachyte, till the Sun

Grew broader toward his death and fell, and all The rosy heights came out above the lawns.

The splendor falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!

O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,

They faint on hill or field or river: Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow forever and forever.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

IV.

"THERE sinks the nebulous star we call the Sun,
If that hypothesis of theirs be sound,"
Said Ida; "let us down and rest:" and we
Down from the lean and wrinkled precipices,
By every coppice-feather'd chasm and cleft,
Dropt thro' the ambrosial gloom to where below
No bigger than a glow-worm shone the tent
Lamp-lit from the inner. Once she lean'd on me,
Descending; once or twice she lent her hand,
And blissful palpitations in the blood,
Stirring a sudden transport rose and fell.

But when we planted level feet, and dipt Beneath the satin dome and enter'd in,

There leaning deep in broider'd down we sank
Our elbows: on a tripod in the midst

A fragrant flame rose, and before us glow'd
Fruit, blossom, viand, amber wine, and gold.

Then she, "Let some one sing to us: lightlier

move

The minutes fledged with music:" and a maid, Of those beside her, smote her harp, and sang.

"Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,

In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

"Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, That brings our friends up from the underworld, Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge; So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

"Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square; So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

"Dear as remember'd kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more."

She ended with such passion that the tear,
She sang of, shook and fell, an erring pearl
Lost in her bosom: but with some disdain
Answer'd the Princess: "If indeed there haunt
About the moulder'd lodges of the Past

So sweet a voice and vague, fatal to men,
Well needs it we should cram our ears with wool
And so pace by: but thine are fancies hatch'd
In silken-folded idleness; nor is it

Wiser to weep a true occasion lost,

But trim our sails, and let old bygones be,
While down the streams that float us each and all
To the issue, goes, like glittering bergs of ice,
Throne after throne, and molten on the waste
Becomes a cloud: for all things serve their time
Toward that great year of equal mights and rights,
Nor would I fight with iron laws, in the end
Found golden: let the past be past; let be
Their cancell❜d Babels: tho' the rough kex break
The starr'd mosaic, and the wild goat hang
Upon the shaft, and the wild fig-tree split

Their monstrous idols, care not while we hear
A trumpet in the distance pealing news
Of better, and Hope, a poising eagle, burns
Above the unrisen morrow:" then to me,
"Know you no song of your own land," she said,
"Not such as moans about the retrospect,
But deals with the other distance and the hues
Of promise; not a death's-head at the wine."

Then I remember'd one myself had made,
What time I watch'd the swallow winging south
From mine own land, part made long since, and
part

Now while I sang, and maidenlike as far
As I could ape their treble, did I sing.

"O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South, Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves, And tell her, tell her what I tell to thee.

"O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each, That bright and fierce and fickle is the South, And dark and true and tender is the North.