So was their sanctuary violated,
So their fair college turned to hospital;
At first with all confusion: by and
Sweet order lived again with other laws:
A kindlier influence reigned; and
Low voices with the ministering
Hung round the sick: the maidens came, they talked,
They sang, they read: till she not fair
To gather light, and she that was,
Her former beauty treble; and to and
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
Clomb to the roofs, and gazed alone for
On that disastrous leaguer, swarms of
Darkening her female field: void was her use,
And she as one that climbs a peak to gazeO'er land and main, and sees a great black
Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night,
Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore,
And suck the blinding splendour from the sand,
And quenching lake by lake and tarn by
Expunge the world: so fared she gazing there;
So blackened all her world in secret,
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
Shot up and shrilled in flickering gyres, but
Lay silent in the muffled cage of life:
And twilight gloomed; and broader-grown the
Drew the great night into themselves, and Heaven,
Star after Star, arose and fell; but I,
Deeper than those weird doubts could reach me,
Quite sundered from the moving Universe,
Nor knew what eye was on me, nor the
That nursed me, more than infants in their sleep.
But Psyche tended Florian: with her oft,
Melissa came; for Blanche had gone, but
Her child among us, willing she should
Court-favour: here and there the small bright head,
A light of healing, glanced about the couch,
Or through the parted silks the tender
Peeped, shining in upon the wounded
With blush and smile, a medicine in
To wile the length from languorous hours, and
The sting from pain; nor seemed it strange that
He rose up whole, and those fair
Joined at her side; nor stranger seemed that
So gentle, so employed, should close in love,
Than when two dewdrops on the petals
To the same sweet air, and tremble deeper down,
And slip at once all-fragrant into one.
Less prosperously the second suit
At first with Psyche. Not though Blanche had
That after that dark night among the
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
To incense the Head once more; till on a
When Cyril pleaded,
Ida came
Seen but of Psyche: on her foot she hungA moment, and she heard, at which her faceA little flushed, and she past on; but
Assumed from thence a half-consent
In stillness, plighted troth, and were at peace.
Nor only these: Love in the sacred
Held carnival at will, and flying
With showers of random sweet on maid and man.
Nor did her father cease to press my claim,
Nor did mine own, now reconciled; nor
Did those twin-brothers, risen again and whole;
Nor Arac, satiate with his victory.
But I lay still, and with me oft she sat:
Then came a change; for sometimes I would
Her hand in wild delirium, gripe it hard,
And fling it like a viper off, and shriek'You are not Ida;' clasp it once again,
And call her Ida, though I knew her not,
And call her sweet, as if in irony,
And call her hard and cold which seemed a truth:
And still she feared that I should lose my mind,
And often she believed that I should die:
Till out of long frustration of her care,
And pensive tendance in the all-weary noons,
And watches in the dead, the dark, when
Throbbed thunder through the palace floors, or
On flying Time from all their silver tongues—And out of memories of her kindlier days,
And sidelong glances at my father's grief,
And at the happy lovers heart in heart—And out of hauntings of my spoken love,
And lonely listenings to my muttered dream,
And often feeling of the helpless hands,
And wordless broodings on the wasted cheek—From all a closer interest flourished up,
Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these,
Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with
By some cold morning glacier; frail at
And feeble, all unconscious of itself,
But such as gathered colour day by day.
Last I woke sane, but well-nigh close to
For weakness: it was evening: silent
Slept on the painted walls, wherein were
Two grand designs; for on one side
The women up in wild revolt, and
At the Oppian Law. Titanic shapes, they
The forum, and half-crushed among the restA dwarf-like Cato cowered. On the other
Hortensia spoke against the tax; behind,
A train of dames: by axe and eagle sat,
With all their foreheads drawn in Roman scowls,
And half the wolf's-milk curdled in their veins,
The fierce triumvirs; and before them
Hortensia pleading: angry was her face.
I saw the forms: I knew not where I was:
They did but look like hollow shows; nor
Sweet Ida: palm to palm she sat: the
Dwelt in her eyes, and softer all her
And rounder seemed: I moved: I sighed: a
Came round my wrist, and tears upon my hand:
Then all for languor and self-pity
Mine down my face, and with what life I had,
And like a flower that cannot all unfold,
So drenched it is with tempest, to the sun,
Yet, as it may, turns toward him,
I on
Fixt my faint eyes, and uttered whisperingly:'If you be, what I think you, some sweet dream,
I would but ask you to fulfil yourself:
But if you be that Ida whom I knew,
I ask you nothing: only, if a dream,
Sweet dream, be perfect. I shall die tonight.
Stoop down and seem to kiss me ere I die.'I could no more, but lay like one in trance,
That hears his burial talked of by his friends,
And cannot speak, nor move, nor make one sign,
But lies and dreads his doom. She turned; she paused;
She stooped; and out of languor leapt a cry;
Leapt fiery Passion from the brinks of death;
And I believed that in the living
My spirit closed with Ida's at the lips;
Till back I fell, and from mine arms she
Glowing all over noble shame; and
Her falser self slipt from her like a robe,
And left her woman, lovelier in her
Than in her mould that other, when she
From barren deeps to conquer all with love;
And down the streaming crystal dropt; and
Far-fleeted by the purple island-sides,
Naked, a double light in air and wave,
To meet her Graces, where they decked her
For worship without end; nor end of mine,
Stateliest, for thee! but mute she glided forth,
Nor glanced behind her, and I sank and slept,
Filled through and through with Love, a happy sleep.
Deep in the night I woke: she, near me, heldA volume of the Poets of her land:
There to herself, all in low tones, she read. 'Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:
The fire-fly wakens: wake thou with me. Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me. Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me. Now lies the silent meteor on, and leavesA shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me. Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake:
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and
Into my bosom and be lost in me.'I heard her turn the page; she found a
Sweet Idyl, and once more, as low, she read: 'Come down,
O maid, from yonder mountain height:
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang)In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
And come, for love is of the valley, come,
For love is of the valley, come thou
And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,
Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to
With Death and Morning on the silver horns,
Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice,
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors:
But follow; let the torrent dance thee
To find him in the valley; let the
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,
That like a broken purpose waste in air:
So waste not thou; but come; for all the
Await thee; azure pillars of the
Arise to thee; the children call, and
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.'So she low-toned; while with shut eyes I
Listening; then looked. Pale was the perfect face;
The bosom with long sighs laboured; and
Seemed the full lips, and mild the luminous eyes,
And the voice trembled and the hand. She
Brokenly, that she knew it, she had
In sweet humility; had failed in all;
That all her labour was but as a
Left in the quarry; but she still were loth,
She still were loth to yield herself to
That wholly scorned to help their equal
Against the sons of men, and barbarous laws.
She prayed me not to judge their cause from
That wronged it, sought far less for truth than
In knowledge: something wild within her breast,
A greater than all knowledge, beat her down.
And she had nursed me there from week to week:
Much had she learnt in little time. In
It was ill counsel had misled the
To vex true hearts: yet was she but a girl—'Ah fool, and made myself a Queen of farce!
When comes another such? never,
I think,
Till the Sun drop, dead, from the signs.' Her voicechoked, and her forehead sank upon her hands,
And her great heart through all the faultful
Went sorrowing in a pause I dared not break;
Till notice of a change in the dark
Was lispt about the acacias, and a bird,
That early woke to feed her little ones,
Sent from a dewy breast a cry for light:
She moved, and at her feet the volume fell.'Blame not thyself too much,' I said, 'nor
Too much the sons of men and barbarous laws;
These were the rough ways of the world till now.
Henceforth thou hast a helper, me, that
The woman's cause is man's: they rise or
Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free:
For she that out of Lethe scales with
The shining steps of Nature, shares with
His nights, his days, moves with him to one goal,
Stays all the fair young planet in her hands—If she be small, slight-natured, miserable,
How shall men grow? but work no more alone!
Our place is much: as far as in us
We two will serve them both in aiding her—Will clear away the parasitic
That seem to keep her up but drag her down—Will leave her space to burgeon out of
Within her—let her make herself her
To give or keep, to live and learn and
All that not harms distinctive womanhood.
For woman is not undevelopt man,
But diverse: could we make her as the man,
Sweet Love were slain: his dearest bond is this,
Not like to like, but like in difference.
Yet in the long years liker must they grow;
The man be more of woman, she of man;
He gain in sweetness and in moral height,
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;
She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care,
Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind;
Till at the last she set herself to man,
Like perfect music unto noble words;
And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time,
Sit side by side, full-summed in all their powers,
Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be,
Self-reverent each and reverencing each,
Distinct in individuality's,
But like each other even as those who love.
Then comes the statelier Eden back to men:
Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm:
Then springs the crowning race of humankind.
May these things be!' Sighing she spoke 'I
They will not.' 'Dear, but let us type them
In our own lives, and this proud watchword
Of equal; seeing either sex
Is half itself, and in true marriage
Nor equal, nor unequal: each
Defect in each, and always thought in thought,
Purpose in purpose, will in will, they grow,
The single pure and perfect animal,
The two-celled heart beating, with one full stroke,
Life.' And again sighing she spoke: 'A
That once was mind! what woman taught you this?''Alone,' I said, 'from earlier than I know,
Immersed in rich foreshadowings of the world,
I loved the woman: he, that doth not, livesA drowning life, besotted in sweet self,
Or pines in sad experience worse than death,
Or keeps his winged affections clipt with crime:
Yet was there one through whom I loved her,
Not learnèd, save in gracious household ways,
Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants,
No Angel, but a dearer being, all
In Angel instincts, breathing Paradise,
Interpreter between the Gods and men,
Who looked all native to her place, and
On tiptoe seemed to touch upon a
Too gross to tread, and all male minds
Swayed to her from their orbits as they moved,
And girdled her with music. Happy
With such a mother! faith in
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things
Comes easy to him, and though he trip and
He shall not blind his soul with clay.' 'But I,'Said Ida, tremulously, 'so all unlike—It seems you love to cheat yourself with words:
This mother is your model. I have heardof your strange doubts: they well might be: I seemA mockery to my own self. Never,
Prince;
You cannot love me.' 'Nay but thee' I said'From yearlong poring on thy pictured eyes,
Ere seen I loved, and loved thee seen, and
Thee woman through the crust of iron
That masked thee from men's reverence up, and
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
Dearer for night, as dearer thou for
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
Melts mist-like into this bright hour, and
Is morn to more, and all the rich
Reels, as the golden Autumn woodland
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
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.'
