Thy voice is heard through rolling drums,That beat to battle where he stands;Thy face across his fancy comes,And gives the battle to his hands:A moment, while the trumpets blow,He sees his brood about thy knee;The next, like fire he meets the foe,And strikes him dead for thine and thee.
So Lilia sang: we thought her half-possessed,She struck such warbling fury through the words;And, after, feigning pique at what she calledThe raillery, or grotesque, or false sublime—Like one that wishes at a dance to changeThe music—clapt her hands and cried for war,Or some grand fight to kill and make an end:And he that next inherited the taleHalf turning to the broken statue, said,'Sir Ralph has got your colours: if I proveYour knight, and fight your battle, what for me?'It chanced, her empty glove upon the tombLay by her like a model of her hand.She took it and she flung it. 'Fight' she said,'And make us all we would be, great and good.'He knightlike in his cap instead of casque,A cap of Tyrol borrowed from the hall,Arranged the favour, and assumed the Prince.
Now, scarce three paces measured from the mound,We stumbled on a stationary voice,And 'Stand, who goes?' 'Two from the palace' I.'The second two: they wait,' he said, 'pass on;His Highness wakes:' and one, that clashed in arms,By glimmering lanes and walls of canvas ledThreading the soldier-city, till we heardThe drowsy folds of our great ensign shakeFrom blazoned lions o'er the imperial tentWhispers of war.Entering, the sudden lightDazed me half-blind: I stood and seemed to hear,As in a poplar grove when a light wind wakesA lisping of the innumerous leaf and dies,Each hissing in his neighbour's ear; and thenA strangled titter, out of which there brakeOn all sides, clamouring etiquette to death,Unmeasured mirth; while now the two old kingsBegan to wag their baldness up and down,The fresh young captains flashed their glittering teeth,The huge bush-bearded Barons heaved and blew,And slain with laughter rolled the gilded Squire.At length my Sire, his rough cheek wet with tears,Panted from weary sides 'King, you are free!We did but keep you surety for our son,If this be he,—or a dragged mawkin, thou,That tends to her bristled grunters in the sludge:'For I was drenched with ooze, and torn with briers,More crumpled than a poppy from the sheath,And all one rag, disprinced from head to heel.Then some one sent beneath his vaulted palmA whispered jest to some one near him, 'Look,He has been among his shadows.' 'Satan takeThe old women and their shadows! (thus the KingRoared) make yourself a man to fight with men.Go: Cyril told us all.'As boys that slinkFrom ferule and the trespass-chiding eye,Away we stole, and transient in a triceFrom what was left of faded woman-sloughTo sheathing splendours and the golden scaleOf harness, issued in the sun, that nowLeapt from the dewy shoulders of the Earth,And hit the Northern hills. Here Cyril met us.A little shy at first, but by and byWe twain, with mutual pardon asked and givenFor stroke and song, resoldered peace, whereonFollowed his tale. Amazed he fled awayThrough the dark land, and later in the nightHad come on Psyche weeping: 'then we fellInto your father's hand, and there she lies,But will not speak, or stir.'He showed a tentA stone-shot off: we entered in, and thereAmong piled arms and rough accoutrements,Pitiful sight, wrapped in a soldier's cloak,Like some sweet sculpture draped from head to foot,And pushed by rude hands from its pedestal,All her fair length upon the ground she lay:And at her head a follower of the camp,A charred and wrinkled piece of womanhood,Sat watching like the watcher by the dead.Then Florian knelt, and 'Come' he whispered to her,'Lift up your head, sweet sister: lie not thus.What have you done but right? you could not slayMe, nor your prince: look up: be comforted:Sweet is it to have done the thing one ought,When fallen in darker ways.' And likewise I:'Be comforted: have I not lost her too,In whose least act abides the nameless charmThat none has else for me?' She heard, she moved,She moaned, a folded voice; and up she sat,And raised the cloak from brows as pale and smoothAs those that mourn half-shrouded over deathIn deathless marble. 'Her,' she said, 'my friend—Parted from her—betrayed her cause and mine—Where shall I breathe? why kept ye not your faith?O base and bad! what comfort? none for me!'To whom remorseful Cyril, 'Yet I prayTake comfort: live, dear lady, for your child!'At which she lifted up her voice and cried.'Ah me, my babe, my blossom, ah, my child,My one sweet child, whom I shall see no more!For now will cruel Ida keep her back;And either she will die from want of care,Or sicken with ill-usage, when they sayThe child is hers—for every little fault,The child is hers; and they will beat my girlRemembering her mother: O my flower!Or they will take her, they will make her hard,And she will pass me by in after-lifeWith some cold reverence worse than were she dead.Ill mother that I was to leave her there,To lag behind, scared by the cry they made,The horror of the shame among them all:But I will go and sit beside the doors,And make a wild petition night and day,Until they hate to hear me like a windWailing for ever, till they open to me,And lay my little blossom at my feet,My babe, my sweet Aglaïa, my one child:And I will take her up and go my way,And satisfy my soul with kissing her:Ah! what might that man not deserve of meWho gave me back my child?' 'Be comforted,'Said Cyril, 'you shall have it:' but againShe veiled her brows, and prone she sank, and soLike tender things that being caught feign death,Spoke not, nor stirred.By this a murmur ranThrough all the camp and inward raced the scoutsWith rumour of Prince Arab hard at hand.We left her by the woman, and withoutFound the gray kings at parle: and 'Look you' criedMy father 'that our compact be fulfilled:You have spoilt this child; she laughs at you and man:She wrongs herself, her sex, and me, and him:But red-faced war has rods of steel and fire;She yields, or war.'Then Gama turned to me:'We fear, indeed, you spent a stormy timeWith our strange girl: and yet they say that stillYou love her. Give us, then, your mind at large:How say you, war or not?''Not war, if possible,O king,' I said, 'lest from the abuse of war,The desecrated shrine, the trampled year,The smouldering homestead, and the household flowerTorn from the lintel—all the common wrong—A smoke go up through which I loom to herThree times a monster: now she lightens scornAt him that mars her plan, but then would hate(And every voice she talked with ratify it,And every face she looked on justify it)The general foe. More soluble is this knot,By gentleness than war. I want her love.What were I nigher this although we dashedYour cities into shards with catapults,She would not love;—or brought her chained, a slave,The lifting of whose eyelash is my lord,Not ever would she love; but brooding turnThe book of scorn, till all my flitting chanceWere caught within the record of her wrongs,And crushed to death: and rather, Sire, than thisI would the old God of war himself were dead,Forgotten, rusting on his iron hills,Rotting on some wild shore with ribs of wreck,Or like an old-world mammoth bulked in ice,Not to be molten out.'And roughly spakeMy father, 'Tut, you know them not, the girls.Boy, when I hear you prate I almost thinkThat idiot legend credible. Look you, Sir!Man is the hunter; woman is his game:The sleek and shining creatures of the chase,We hunt them for the beauty of their skins;They love us for it, and we ride them down.Wheedling and siding with them! Out! for shame!Boy, there's no rose that's half so dear to themAs he that does the thing they dare not do,Breathing and sounding beauteous battle, comesWith the air of the trumpet round him, and leaps inAmong the women, snares them by the scoreFlattered and flustered, wins, though dashed with deathHe reddens what he kisses: thus I wonYou mother, a good mother, a good wife,Worth winning; but this firebrand—gentlenessTo such as her! if Cyril spake her true,To catch a dragon in a cherry net,To trip a tigress with a gossamerWere wisdom to it.''Yea but Sire,' I cried,'Wild natures need wise curbs. The soldier? No:What dares not Ida do that she should prizeThe soldier? I beheld her, when she roseThe yesternight, and storming in extremes,Stood for her cause, and flung defiance downGagelike to man, and had not shunned the death,No, not the soldier's: yet I hold her, king,True woman: you clash them all in one,That have as many differences as we.The violet varies from the lily as farAs oak from elm: one loves the soldier, oneThe silken priest of peace, one this, one that,And some unworthily; their sinless faith,A maiden moon that sparkles on a sty,Glorifying clown and satyr; whence they needMore breadth of culture: is not Ida right?They worth it? truer to the law within?Severer in the logic of a life?Twice as magnetic to sweet influencesOf earth and heaven? and she of whom you speak,My mother, looks as whole as some sereneCreation minted in the golden moodsOf sovereign artists; not a thought, a touch,But pure as lines of green that streak the whiteOf the first snowdrop's inner leaves; I say,Not like the piebald miscellany, man,Bursts of great heart and slips in sensual mire,But whole and one: and take them all-in-all,Were we ourselves but half as good, as kind,As truthful, much that Ida claims as rightHad ne'er been mooted, but as frankly theirsAs dues of Nature. To our point: not war:Lest I lose all.''Nay, nay, you spake but sense'Said Gama. 'We remember love ourselfIn our sweet youth; we did not rate him thenThis red-hot iron to be shaped with blows.You talk almost like Ida:shecan talk;And there is something in it as you say:But you talk kindlier: we esteem you for it.—He seems a gracious and a gallant Prince,I would he had our daughter: for the rest,Our own detention, why, the causes weighed,Fatherly fears—you used us courteously—We would do much to gratify your Prince—We pardon it; and for your ingress hereUpon the skirt and fringe of our fair land,you did but come as goblins in the night,Nor in the furrow broke the ploughman's head,Nor burnt the grange, nor bussed the milking-maid,Nor robbed the farmer of his bowl of cream:But let your Prince (our royal word upon it,He comes back safe) ride with us to our lines,And speak with Arac: Arac's word is thriceAs ours with Ida: something may be done—I know not what—and ours shall see us friends.You, likewise, our late guests, if so you will,Follow us: who knows? we four may build some planFoursquare to opposition.'Here he reachedWhite hands of farewell to my sire, who growledAn answer which, half-muffled in his beard,Let so much out as gave us leave to go.Then rode we with the old king across the lawnsBeneath huge trees, a thousand rings of SpringIn every bole, a song on every sprayOf birds that piped their Valentines, and wokeDesire in me to infuse my tale of loveIn the old king's ears, who promised help, and oozedAll o'er with honeyed answer as we rodeAnd blossom-fragrant slipt the heavy dewsGathered by night and peace, with each light airOn our mailed heads: but other thoughts than PeaceBurnt in us, when we saw the embattled squares,And squadrons of the Prince, trampling the flowersWith clamour: for among them rose a cryAs if to greet the king; they made a halt;The horses yelled; they clashed their arms; the drumBeat; merrily-blowing shrilled the martial fife;And in the blast and bray of the long hornAnd serpent-throated bugle, undulatedThe banner: anon to meet us lightly prancedThree captains out; nor ever had I seenSuch thews of men: the midmost and the highestWas Arac: all about his motion clungThe shadow of his sister, as the beamOf the East, that played upon them, made them glanceLike those three stars of the airy Giant's zone,That glitter burnished by the frosty dark;And as the fiery Sirius alters hue,And bickers into red and emerald, shoneTheir morions, washed with morning, as they came.And I that prated peace, when first I heardWar-music, felt the blind wildbeast of force,Whose home is in the sinews of a man,Stir in me as to strike: then took the kingHis three broad sons; with now a wandering handAnd now a pointed finger, told them all:A common light of smiles at our disguiseBroke from their lips, and, ere the windy jestHad laboured down within his ample lungs,The genial giant, Arac, rolled himselfThrice in the saddle, then burst out in words.'Our land invaded, 'sdeath! and he himselfYour captive, yet my father wills not war:And, 'sdeath! myself, what care I, war or no?but then this question of your troth remains:And there's a downright honest meaning in her;She flies too high, she flies too high! and yetShe asked but space and fairplay for her scheme;She prest and prest it on me—I myself,What know I of these things? but, life and soul!I thought her half-right talking of her wrongs;I say she flies too high, 'sdeath! what of that?I take her for the flower of womankind,And so I often told her, right or wrong,And, Prince, she can be sweet to those she loves,And, right or wrong, I care not: this is all,I stand upon her side: she made me swear it—'Sdeath—and with solemn rites by candle-light—Swear by St something—I forget her name—Her that talked down the fifty wisest men;Shewas a princess too; and so I swore.Come, this is all; she will not: waive your claim:If not, the foughten field, what else, at onceDecides it, 'sdeath! against my father's will.'I lagged in answer loth to render upMy precontract, and loth by brainless warTo cleave the rift of difference deeper yet;Till one of those two brothers, half asideAnd fingering at the hair about his lip,To prick us on to combat 'Like to like!The woman's garment hid the woman's heart.'A taunt that clenched his purpose like a blow!For fiery-short was Cyril's counter-scoff,And sharp I answered, touched upon the pointWhere idle boys are cowards to their shame,'Decide it here: why not? we are three to three.'Then spake the third 'But three to three? no more?No more, and in our noble sister's cause?More, more, for honour: every captain waitsHungry for honour, angry for his king.More, more some fifty on a side, that eachMay breathe himself, and quick! by overthrowOf these or those, the question settled die.''Yea,' answered I, 'for this wreath of air,This flake of rainbow flying on the highestFoam of men's deeds—this honour, if ye will.It needs must be for honour if at all:Since, what decision? if we fail, we fail,And if we win, we fail: she would not keepHer compact.' ''Sdeath! but we will send to her,'Said Arac, 'worthy reasons why she shouldBide by this issue: let our missive through,And you shall have her answer by the word.''Boys!' shrieked the old king, but vainlier than a henTo her false daughters in the pool; for noneRegarded; neither seemed there more to say:Back rode we to my father's camp, and foundHe thrice had sent a herald to the gates,To learn if Ida yet would cede our claim,Or by denial flush her babbling wellsWith her own people's life: three times he went:The first, he blew and blew, but none appeared:He battered at the doors; none came: the next,An awful voice within had warned him thence:The third, and those eight daughters of the ploughCame sallying through the gates, and caught his hair,And so belaboured him on rib and cheekThey made him wild: not less one glance he caughtThrough open doors of Ida stationed thereUnshaken, clinging to her purpose, firmThough compassed by two armies and the noiseOf arms; and standing like a stately PineSet in a cataract on an island-crag,When storm is on the heights, and right and leftSucked from the dark heart of the long hills rollThe torrents, dashed to the vale: and yet her willBred will in me to overcome it or fall.But when I told the king that I was pledgedTo fight in tourney for my bride, he clashedHis iron palms together with a cry;Himself would tilt it out among the lads:But overborne by all his bearded lordsWith reasons drawn from age and state, perforceHe yielded, wroth and red, with fierce demur:And many a bold knight started up in heat,And sware to combat for my claim till death.All on this side the palace ran the fieldFlat to the garden-wall: and likewise here,Above the garden's glowing blossom-belts,A columned entry shone and marble stairs,And great bronze valves, embossed with TomyrisAnd what she did to Cyrus after fight,But now fast barred: so here upon the flatAll that long morn the lists were hammered up,And all that morn the heralds to and fro,With message and defiance, went and came;Last, Ida's answer, in a royal hand,But shaken here and there, and rolling wordsOration-like. I kissed it and I read.'O brother, you have known the pangs we felt,What heats of indignation when we heardOf those that iron-cramped their women's feet;Of lands in which at the altar the poor brideGives her harsh groom for bridal-gift a scourge;Of living hearts that crack within the fireWhere smoulder their dead despots; and of those,—Mothers,—that, with all prophetic pity, flingTheir pretty maids in the running flood, and swoopsThe vulture, beak and talon, at the heartMade for all noble motion: and I sawThat equal baseness lived in sleeker timesWith smoother men: the old leaven leavened all:Millions of throats would bawl for civil rights,No woman named: therefore I set my faceAgainst all men, and lived but for mine own.Far off from men I built a fold for them:I stored it full of rich memorial:I fenced it round with gallant institutes,And biting laws to scare the beasts of preyAnd prospered; till a rout of saucy boysBrake on us at our books, and marred our peace,Masked like our maids, blustering I know not whatOf insolence and love, some pretext heldOf baby troth, invalid, since my willSealed not the bond—the striplings! for their sport!—I tamed my leopards: shall I not tame these?Or you? or I? for since you think me touchedIn honour—what, I would not aught of false—Is not our case pure? and whereas I knowYour prowess, Arac, and what mother's bloodYou draw from, fight; you failing, I abideWhat end soever: fail you will not. StillTake not his life: he risked it for my own;His mother lives: yet whatsoe'er you do,Fight and fight well; strike and strike him. O dearBrothers, the woman's Angel guards you, youThe sole men to be mingled with our cause,The sole men we shall prize in the after-time,Your very armour hallowed, and your statuesReared, sung to, when, this gad-fly brushed aside,We plant a solid foot into the Time,And mould a generation strong to moveWith claim on claim from right to right, till sheWhose name is yoked with children's, know herself;And Knowledge in our own land make her free,And, ever following those two crownèd twins,Commerce and conquest, shower the fiery grainOf freedom broadcast over all the orbsBetween the Northern and the Southern morn.'Then came a postscript dashed across the rest.'See that there be no traitors in your camp:We seem a nest of traitors—none to trustSince our arms failed—this Egypt-plague of men!Almost our maids were better at their homes,Than thus man-girdled here: indeed I thinkOur chiefest comfort is the little childOf one unworthy mother; which she left:She shall not have it back: the child shall growTo prize the authentic mother of her mind.I took it for an hour in mine own bedThis morning: there the tender orphan handsFelt at my heart, and seemed to charm from thenceThe wrath I nursed against the world: farewell.'I ceased; he said, 'Stubborn, but she may sitUpon a king's right hand in thunder-storms,And breed up warriors! See now, though yourselfBe dazzled by the wildfire Love to sloughsThat swallow common sense, the spindling king,This Gama swamped in lazy tolerance.When the man wants weight, the woman takes it up,And topples down the scales; but this is fixtAs are the roots of earth and base of all;Man for the field and woman for the hearth:Man for the sword and for the needle she:Man with the head and woman with the heart:Man to command and woman to obey;All else confusion. Look you! the gray mareIs ill to live with, when her whinny shrillsFrom tile to scullery, and her small goodmanShrinks in his arm-chair while the fires of HellMix with his hearth: but you—she's yet a colt—Take, break her: strongly groomed and straitly curbedShe might not rank with those detestableThat let the bantling scald at home, and brawlTheir rights and wrongs like potherbs in the street.They say she's comely; there's the fairer chance:Ilike her none the less for rating at her!Besides, the woman wed is not as we,But suffers change of frame. A lusty braceOf twins may weed her of her folly. Boy,The bearing and the training of a childIs 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:'I mused on that wild morning in the woods,And on the 'Follow, follow, thou shalt win:'I thought on all the wrathful king had said,And how the strange betrothment was to end:Then I remembered that burnt sorcerer's curseThat one should fight with shadows and should fall;And like a flash the weird affection came:King, camp and college turned to hollow shows;I seemed to move in old memorial tilts,And doing battle with forgotten ghosts,To dream myself the shadow of a dream:And ere I woke it was the point of noon,The lists were ready. Empanoplied and plumedWe entered in, and waited, fifty thereOpposed to fifty, till the trumpet blaredAt the barrier like a wild horn in a landOf echoes, and a moment, and once moreThe trumpet, and again: at which the stormOf galloping hoofs bare on the ridge of spearsAnd riders front to front, until they closedIn conflict with the crash of shivering points,And thunder. Yet it seemed a dream, I dreamedOf 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 reeled but kept their seats:Part rolled on the earth and rose again and drew:Part stumbled mixt with floundering horses. DownFrom those two bulks at Arac's side, and downFrom Arac's arm, as from a giant's flail,The large blows rained, as here and everywhereHe rode the mellay, lord of the ringing lists,And all the plain,—brand, mace, and shaft, and shield—Shocked, like an iron-clanging anvil bangedWith hammers; till I thought, can this be heFrom Gama's dwarfish loins? if this be so,The mother makes us most—and in my dreamI glanced aside, and saw the palace-frontAlive with fluttering scarfs and ladies' eyes,And highest, among the statues, statuelike,Between a cymballed Miriam and a Jael,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 sheNo saint—inexorable—no tenderness—Too hard, too cruel: yet she sees me fight,Yea, let her see me fall! and with that I draveAmong the thickest and bore down a Prince,And Cyril, one. Yea, let me make my dreamAll that I would. But that large-moulded man,His visage all agrin as at a wake,Made at me through the press, and, staggering backWith stroke on stroke the horse and horseman, cameAs comes a pillar of electric cloud,Flaying the roofs and sucking up the drains,And shadowing down the champaign till it strikesOn a wood, and takes, and breaks, and cracks, and splits,And twists the grain with such a roar that EarthReels, and the herdsmen cry; for everythingGave way before him: only Florian, heThat loved me closer than his own right eye,Thrust in between; but Arac rode him down:And Cyril seeing it, pushed against the Prince,With Psyche's colour round his helmet, tough,Strong, supple, sinew-corded, apt at arms;But tougher, heavier, stronger, he that smoteAnd threw him: last I spurred; I felt my veinsStretch with fierce heat; a moment hand to hand,And sword to sword, and horse to horse we hung,Till I struck out and shouted; the blade glanced,I did but shear a feather, and dream and truthFlowed from me; darkness closed me; and I fell.
Home they brought her warrior dead:She nor swooned, nor uttered cry:All her maidens, watching, said,'She must weep or she will die.'Then they praised him, soft and low,Called him worthy to be loved,Truest friend and noblest foe;Yet she neither spoke nor moved.Stole a maiden from her place,Lightly to the warrior stept,Took the face-cloth from the face;Yet she neither moved nor wept.Rose a nurse of ninety years,Set his child upon her knee—Like summer tempest came her tears—'Sweet my child, I live for thee.'
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 allSo 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 causeFor ever lost, there went up a great cry,The Prince is slain. My father heard and ranIn on the lists, and there unlaced my casqueAnd grovelled on my body, and after himCame Psyche, sorrowing for Aglaïa.But high upon the palace Ida stoodWith Psyche's babe in arm: there on the roofsLike 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 bulkOf spanless girth, that lays on every sideA thousand arms and rushes to the Sun.'Our enemies have fallen, have fallen: they came;The leaves were wet with women's tears: they heardA 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 faggots 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 knewThere 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 growA night of Summer from the heat, a breadthOf Autumn, dropping fruits of power: and rolledWith music in the growing breeze of Time,The tops shall strike from star to star, the fangsShall move the stony bases of the world.'And now, O maids, behold our sanctuaryIs violate, our laws broken: fear we notTo break them more in their behoof, whose armsChampioned our cause and won it with a dayBlanched in our annals, and perpetual feast,When dames and heroines of the golden yearShall strip a hundred hollows bare of Spring,To rain an April of ovation roundTheir 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 theseThe brethren of our blood and cause, that thereLie bruised and maimed, the tender ministriesOf female hands and hospitality.'She spoke, and with the babe yet in her arms,Descending, burst the great bronze valves, and ledA hundred maids in train across the Park.Some cowled, and some bare-headed, on they came,Their feet in flowers, her loveliest: by them wentThe enamoured air sighing, and on their curlsFrom the high tree the blossom wavering fell,And over them the tremulous isles of lightSlided, they moving under shade: but BlancheAt distance followed: so they came: anonThrough open field into the lists they woundTimorously; and as the leader of the herdThat 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 onTo where her wounded brethren lay; there stayed;Knelt on one knee,—the child on one,—and prestTheir 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 servedWith female hands and hospitality.'Then, whether moved by this, or was it chance,She past my way. Up started from my sideThe 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 sawThe haggard father's face and reverend beardOf grisly twine, all dabbled with the bloodOf his own son, shuddered, a twitch of painTortured her mouth, and o'er her forehead pastA 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 scornDrew from my neck the painting and the tress,And held them up: she saw them, and a dayRose from the distance on her memory,When the good Queen, her mother, shore the tressWith kisses, ere the days of Lady Blanche:And then once more she looked at my pale face:Till understanding all the foolish workOf 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 laidA 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 hereIn our own palace: we will tend on himLike one of these; if so, by any means,To lighten this great clog of thanks, that makeOur progress falter to the woman's goal.'She said: but at the happy word 'he lives'My father stooped, re-fathered o'er my wounds.So those two foes above my fallen life,With brow to brow like night and evening mixtTheir dark and gray, while Psyche ever stoleA little nearer, till the babe that by us,Half-lapt in glowing gauze and golden brede,Lay like a new-fallen meteor on the grass,Uncared for, spied its mother and beganA blind and babbling laughter, and to danceIts body, and reach its fatling innocent armsAnd lazy lingering fingers. She the appealBrooked not, but clamouring out 'Mine—mine—not yours,It is not yours, but mine: give me the child'Ceased all on tremble: piteous was the cry:So stood the unhappy mother open-mouthed,And turned each face her way: wan was her cheekWith hollow watch, her blooming mantle torn,Red grief and mother's hunger in her eye,And down dead-heavy sank her curls, and halfThe sacred mother's bosom, panting, burstThe laces toward her babe; but she nor caredNor knew it, clamouring on, till Ida heard,Looked up, and rising slowly from me, stoodErect and silent, striking with her glanceThe mother, me, the child; but he that layBeside us, Cyril, battered as he was,Trailed himself up on one knee: then he drewHer robe to meet his lips, and down she lookedAt the armed man sideways, pitying as it seemed,Or self-involved; but when she learnt his face,Remembering his ill-omened song, aroseOnce more through all her height, and o'er him grewTall as a figure lengthened on the sandWhen the tide ebbs in sunshine, and he said:'O fair and strong and terrible! LionessThat with your long locks play the Lion's mane!But Love and Nature, these are two more terribleAnd stronger. See, your foot is on our necks,We vanquished, you the Victor of your will.What would you more? Give her the child! remainOrbed in your isolation: he is dead,Or all as dead: henceforth we let you be:Win you the hearts of women; and bewareLest, where you seek the common love of these,The common hate with the revolving wheelShould drag you down, and some great NemesisBreak from a darkened future, crowned with fire,And tread you out for ever: but howso'erFixed in yourself, never in your own armsTo hold your own, deny not hers to her,Give her the child! O if, I say, you keepOne pulse that beats true woman, if you lovedThe breast that fed or arm that dandled you,Or own one port of sense not flint to prayer,Give her the child! or if you scorn to lay it,Yourself, in hands so lately claspt with yours,Or speak to her, your dearest, her one fault,The tenderness, not yours, that could not kill,Givemeit:Iwill give it her.He said:At first her eye with slow dilation rolledDry flame, she listening; after sank and sankAnd, into mournful twilight mellowing, dweltFull on the child; she took it: 'Pretty bud!Lily of the vale! half opened bell of the woods!Sole comfort of my dark hour, when a worldOf traitorous friend and broken system madeNo purple in the distance, mystery,Pledge of a love not to be mine, farewell;These men are hard upon us as of old,We two must part: and yet how fain was ITo dream thy cause embraced in mine, to thinkI might be something to thee, when I feltThy helpless warmth about my barren breastIn the dead prime: but may thy mother proveAs true to thee as false, false, false to me!And, if thou needs must needs bear the yoke, I wish itGentle as freedom'—here she kissed it: then—'All good go with thee! take it Sir,' and soLaid the soft babe in his hard-mailèd hands,Who turned half-round to Psyche as she sprangTo meet it, with an eye that swum in thanks;Then felt it sound and whole from head to foot,And hugged and never hugged it close enough,And in her hunger mouthed and mumbled it,And hid her bosom with it; after thatPut on more calm and added suppliantly:'We two were friends: I go to mine own landFor ever: find some other: as for meI scarce am fit for your great plans: yet speak to me,Say one soft word and let me part forgiven.'But Ida spoke not, rapt upon the child.Then Arac. 'Ida—'sdeath! you blame the man;You wrong yourselves—the woman is so hardUpon the woman. Come, a grace to me!I am your warrior: I and mine have foughtYour battle: kiss her; take her hand, she weeps:'Sdeath! I would sooner fight thrice o'er than see it.'But Ida spoke not, gazing on the ground,And reddening in the furrows of his chin,And moved beyond his custom, Gama said:'I've heard that there is iron in the blood,And I believe it. Not one word? not one?Whence drew you this steel temper? not from me,Not from your mother, now a saint with saints.She said you had a heart—I heard her say it—"Our Ida has a heart"—just ere she died—"But see that some one with authorityBe near her still" and I—I sought for one—All people said she had authority—The Lady Blanche: much profit! Not one word;No! though your father sues: see how you standStiff as Lot's wife, and all the good knights maimed,I trust that there is no one hurt to death,For our wild whim: and was it then for this,Was it for this we gave our palace up,Where we withdrew from summer heats and state,And had our wine and chess beneath the planes,And many a pleasant hour with her that's gone,Ere you were born to vex us? Is it kind?Speak to her I say: is this not she of whom,When first she came, all flushed you said to meNow had you got a friend of your own age,Now could you share your thought; now should men seeTwo women faster welded in one loveThan pairs of wedlock; she you walked with, sheYou talked with, whole nights long, up in the tower,Of sine and arc, spheroïd and azimuth,And right ascension, Heaven knows what; and nowA word, but one, one little kindly word,Not one to spare her: out upon you, flint!You love nor her, nor me, nor any; nay,You shame your mother's judgment too. Not one?You will not? well—no heart have you, or suchAs fancies like the vermin in a nutHave fretted all to dust and bitterness.'So said the small king moved beyond his wont.But Ida stood nor spoke, drained of her forceBy many a varying influence and so long.Down through her limbs a drooping languor wept:Her head a little bent; and on her mouthA doubtful smile dwelt like a clouded moonIn a still water: then brake out my sire,Lifted his grim head from my wounds. 'O you,Woman, whom we thought woman even now,And were half fooled to let you tend our son,Because he might have wished it—but we see,The accomplice of your madness unforgiven,And think that you might mix his draught with death,When your skies change again: the rougher handIs safer: on to the tents: take up the Prince.'He rose, and while each ear was pricked to attendA tempest, through the cloud that dimmed her brokeA genial warmth and light once more, and shoneThrough glittering drops on her sad friend.'Come hither.O Psyche,' she cried out, 'embrace me, come,Quick while I melt; make reconcilement sureWith one that cannot keep her mind an hour:Come to the hollow hear they slander so!Kiss and be friends, like children being chid!Iseem no more:Iwant forgiveness too:I should have had to do with none but maids,That have no links with men. Ah false but dear,Dear traitor, too much loved, why?—why?—Yet see,Before these kings we embrace you yet once moreWith all forgiveness, all oblivion,And trust, not love, you less.And now, O sire,Grant me your son, to nurse, to wait upon him,Like mine own brother. For my debt to him,This nightmare weight of gratitude, I know it;Taunt me no more: yourself and yours shall haveFree adit; we will scatter all our maidsTill happier times each to her proper hearth:What use to keep them here—now? grant my prayer.Help, father, brother, help; speak to the king:Thaw this male nature to some touch of thatWhich kills me with myself, and drags me downFrom my fixt height to mob me up with allThe soft and milky rabble of womankind,Poor weakling even as they are.'Passionate tearsFollowed: the king replied not: Cyril said:'Your brother, Lady,—Florian,—ask for himOf your great head—for he is wounded too—That you may tend upon him with the prince.''Ay so,' said Ida with a bitter smile,'Our laws are broken: let him enter too.'Then Violet, she that sang the mournful song,And had a cousin tumbled on the plain,Petitioned too for him. 'Ay so,' she said,'I stagger in the stream: I cannot keepMy heart an eddy from the brawling hour:We break our laws with ease, but let it be.''Ay so?' said Blanche: 'Amazed am I to herYour Highness: but your Highness breaks with easeThe law your Highness did not make: 'twas I.I had been wedded wife, I knew mankind,And blocked them out; but these men came to wooYour Highness—verily I think to win.'So she, and turned askance a wintry eye:But Ida with a voice, that like a bellTolled by an earthquake in a trembling tower,Rang ruin, answered full of grief and scorn.'Fling our doors wide! all, all, not one, but all,Not only he, but by my mother's soul,Whatever man lies wounded, friend or foe,Shall enter, if he will. Let our girls flit,Till the storm die! but had you stood by us,The roar that breaks the Pharos from his baseHad left us rock. She fain would sting us too,But shall not. Pass, and mingle with your likes.We brook no further insult but are gone.'She turned; the very nape of her white neckWas rosed with indignation: but the PrinceHer brother came; the king her father charmedHer wounded soul with words: nor did mine ownRefuse her proffer, lastly gave his hand.Then us they lifted up, dead weights, and bareStraight to the doors: to them the doors gave wayGroaning, and in the Vestal entry shriekedThe virgin marble under iron heels:And on they moved and gained the hall, and thereRested: but great the crush was, and each base,To left and right, of those tall columns drownedIn silken fluctuation and the swarmOf female whisperers: at the further endWas Ida by the throne, the two great catsClose by her, like supporters on a shield,Bow-backed with fear: but in the centre stoodThe common men with rolling eyes; amazedThey glared upon the women, and aghastThe women stared at these, all silent, saveWhen armour clashed or jingled, while the day,Descending, struck athwart the hall, and shotA flying splendour out of brass and steel,That o'er the statues leapt 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 diedOf fright in far apartments.Then the voiceOf Ida sounded, issuing ordinance:And me they bore up the broad stairs, and throughThe long-laid galleries past a hundred doorsTo one deep chamber shut from sound, and dueTo languid limbs and sickness; left me in it;And others otherwhere they laid; and allThat afternoon a sound arose of hoofAnd chariot, many a maiden passing homeTill happier times; but some were left of thoseHeld 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.