Poem II

At break of day the College Portress came:She brought us Academic silks, in hueThe lilac, with a silken hood to each,And zoned with gold; and now when these were on,And we as rich as moths from dusk cocoons,She, curtseying her obeisance, let us knowThe Princess Ida waited: out we paced,I first, and following through the porch that sangAll round with laurel, issued in a courtCompact of lucid marbles, bossed with lengthsOf classic frieze, with ample awnings gayBetwixt the pillars, and with great urns of flowers.The Muses and the Graces, grouped in threes,Enringed a billowing fountain in the midst;And here and there on lattice edges layOr book or lute; but hastily we past,And up a flight of stairs into the hall.

There at a board by tome and paper sat,With two tame leopards couched beside her throne,All beauty compassed in a female form,The Princess; liker to the inhabitantOf some clear planet close upon the Sun,Than our man's earth; such eyes were in her head,And so much grace and power, breathing downFrom over her arched brows, with every turnLived through her to the tips of her long hands,And to her feet. She rose her height, and said:

'We give you welcome: not without redoundOf use and glory to yourselves ye come,The first-fruits of the stranger: aftertime,And that full voice which circles round the grave,Will rank you nobly, mingled up with me.What! are the ladies of your land so tall?''We of the court' said Cyril. 'From the court'She answered, 'then ye know the Prince?' and he:'The climax of his age! as though there wereOne rose in all the world, your Highness that,He worships your ideal:' she replied:'We scarcely thought in our own hall to hearThis barren verbiage, current among men,Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment.Your flight from out your bookless wilds would seemAs arguing love of knowledge and of power;Your language proves you still the child. Indeed,We dream not of him: when we set our handTo this great work, we purposed with ourselfNever to wed. You likewise will do well,Ladies, in entering here, to cast and flingThe tricks, which make us toys of men, that so,Some future time, if so indeed you will,You may with those self-styled our lords allyYour fortunes, justlier balanced, scale with scale.'

At those high words, we conscious of ourselves,Perused the matting: then an officerRose up, and read the statutes, such as these:Not for three years to correspond with home;Not for three years to cross the liberties;Not for three years to speak with any men;And many more, which hastily subscribed,We entered on the boards: and 'Now,' she cried,'Ye are green wood, see ye warp not. Look, our hall!Our statues!--not of those that men desire,Sleek Odalisques, or oracles of mode,Nor stunted squaws of West or East; but sheThat taught the Sabine how to rule, and sheThe foundress of the Babylonian wall,The Carian Artemisia strong in war,The Rhodope, that built the pyramid,Clelia, Cornelia, with the PalmyreneThat fought Aurelian, and the Roman browsOf Agrippina. Dwell with these, and loseConvention, since to look on noble formsMakes noble through the sensuous organismThat which is higher. O lift your natures up:Embrace our aims: work out your freedom. Girls,Knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed:Drink deep, until the habits of the slave,The sins of emptiness, gossip and spiteAnd slander, die. Better not be at allThan not be noble. Leave us: you may go:Today the Lady Psyche will harangueThe fresh arrivals of the week before;For they press in from all the provinces,And fill the hive.'She spoke, and bowing wavedDismissal: back again we crost the courtTo Lady Psyche's: as we entered in,There sat along the forms, like morning dovesThat sun their milky bosoms on the thatch,A patient range of pupils; she herselfErect behind a desk of satin-wood,A quick brunette, well-moulded, falcon-eyed,And on the hither side, or so she looked,Of twenty summers. At her left, a child,In shining draperies, headed like a star,Her maiden babe, a double April old,Aglaïa slept. We sat: the Lady glanced:Then Florian, but not livelier than the dameThat whispered 'Asses' ears', among the sedge,'My sister.' 'Comely, too, by all that's fair,'Said Cyril. 'Oh hush, hush!' and she began.

'This world was once a fluid haze of light,Till toward the centre set the starry tides,And eddied into suns, that wheeling castThe planets: then the monster, then the man;Tattooed or woaded, winter-clad in skins,Raw from the prime, and crushing down his mate;As yet we find in barbarous isles, and hereAmong the lowest.'Thereupon she tookA bird's-eye-view of all the ungracious past;Glanced at the legendary AmazonAs emblematic of a nobler age;Appraised the Lycian custom, spoke of thoseThat lay at wine with Lar and Lucumo;Ran down the Persian, Grecian, Roman linesOf empire, and the woman's state in each,How far from just; till warming with her themeShe fulmined out her scorn of laws SaliqueAnd little-footed China, touched on MahometWith much contempt, and came to chivalry:When some respect, however slight, was paidTo woman, superstition all awry:However then commenced the dawn: a beamHad slanted forward, falling in a landOf promise; fruit would follow. Deep, indeed,Their debt of thanks to her who first had daredTo leap the rotten pales of prejudice,Disyoke their necks from custom, and assertNone lordlier than themselves but that which madeWoman and man. She had founded; they must build.Here might they learn whatever men were taught:Let them not fear: some said their heads were less:Some men's were small; not they the least of men;For often fineness compensated size:Besides the brain was like the hand, and grewWith using; thence the man's, if more was more;He took advantage of his strength to beFirst in the field: some ages had been lost;But woman ripened earlier, and her lifeWas longer; and albeit their glorious namesWere fewer, scattered stars, yet since in truthThe highest is the measure of the man,And not the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay,Nor those horn-handed breakers of the glebe,But Homer, Plato, Verulam; even soWith woman: and in arts of governmentElizabeth and others; arts of warThe peasant Joan and others; arts of graceSappho and others vied with any man:And, last not least, she who had left her place,And bowed her state to them, that they might growTo use and power on this Oasis, laptIn the arms of leisure, sacred from the blightOf ancient influence and scorn.At lastShe rose upon a wind of prophecyDilating on the future; 'everywhereWho heads in council, two beside the hearth,Two in the tangled business of the world,Two in the liberal offices of life,Two plummets dropt for one to sound the abyssOf science, and the secrets of the mind:Musician, painter, sculptor, critic, more:And everywhere the broad and bounteous EarthShould bear a double growth of those rare souls,Poets, whose thoughts enrich the blood of the world.'

She ended here, and beckoned us: the restParted; and, glowing full-faced welcome, sheBegan to address us, and was moving onIn gratulation, till as when a boatTacks, and the slackened sail flaps, all her voiceFaltering and fluttering in her throat, she cried'My brother!' 'Well, my sister.' 'O,' she said,'What do you here? and in this dress? and these?Why who are these? a wolf within the fold!A pack of wolves! the Lord be gracious to me!A plot, a plot, a plot to ruin all!''No plot, no plot,' he answered. 'Wretched boy,How saw you not the inscription on the gate,'And if I had,' he answered, 'who could thinkThe softer Adams of your Academe,O sister, Sirens though they be, were suchAs chanted on the blanching bones of men?''But you will find it otherwise' she said.'You jest: ill jesting with edge-tools! my vowBinds me to speak, and O that iron will,That axelike edge unturnable, our Head,The Princess.' 'Well then, Psyche, take my life,And nail me like a weasel on a grangeFor warning: bury me beside the gate,And cut this epitaph above my bones;Here lies a brother by a sister slain,All for the common good of womankind.''Let me die too,' said Cyril, 'having seenAnd heard the Lady Psyche.'I struck in:'Albeit so masked, Madam, I love the truth;Receive it; and in me behold the PrinceYour countryman, affianced years agoTo 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 wasDisrooted, what I am is grafted here.Affianced, Sir? love-whispers may not breatheWithin this vestal limit, and how should I,Who am not mine, say, live: the thunderboltHangs 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 marred: for this your Academe,Whichever side be Victor, in the hallooWill topple to the trumpet down, and passWith all fair theories only made to gildA stormless summer.' 'Let the Princess judgeOf that' she said: 'farewell, Sir--and to you.I shudder at the sequel, but I go.'

'Are you that Lady Psyche,' I rejoined,'The fifth in line from that old Florian,Yet hangs his portrait in my father's hall(The gaunt old Baron with his beetle browSun-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; 'sheWith whom I sang about the morning hills,Flung ball, flew kite, and raced the purple fly,And snared the squirrel of the glen? are youThat Psyche, wont to bind my throbbing brow,To smoothe my pillow, mix the foaming draughtOf fever, tell me pleasant tales, and readMy sickness down to happy dreams? are youThat brother-sister Psyche, both in one?You were that Psyche, but what are you now?''You are that Psyche,' said Cyril, 'for whomI would be that for ever which I seem,Woman, if I might sit beside your feet,And glean your scattered sapience.'Then once more,'Are you that Lady Psyche,' I began,'That on her bridal morn before she pastFrom all her old companions, when the kindKissed her pale cheek, declared that ancient tiesWould still be dear beyond the southern hills;That were there any of our people thereIn want or peril, there was one to hearAnd help them? look! for such are these and I.''Are you that Psyche,' Florian asked, 'to whom,In gentler days, your arrow-wounded fawnCame flying while you sat beside the well?The creature laid his muzzle on your lap,And sobbed, and you sobbed with it, and the bloodWas 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 crowed for kisses.''Out upon it!'She answered, 'peace! and why should I not playThe Spartan Mother with emotion, beThe 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 whomThe secular emancipation turnsOf half this world, be swerved from right to saveA 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 fearMy conscience will not count me fleckless; yet--Hear my conditions: promise (otherwiseYou perish) as you came, to slip awayToday, tomorrow, soon: it shall be said,These women were 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, commencedA to-and-fro, so pacing till she pausedBy Florian; holding out her lily armsTook both his hands, and smiling faintly said:'I knew you at the first: though you have grownYou scarce have altered: I am sad and gladTo see you, Florian. I give thee to deathMy brother! it was duty spoke, not I.My needful seeming harshness, pardon it.Our mother, is she well?'With that she kissedHis forehead, then, a moment after, clungAbout him, and betwixt them blossomed upFrom out a common vein of memorySweet household talk, and phrases of the hearth,And far allusion, till the gracious dewsBegan to glisten and to fall: and whileThey stood, so rapt, we gazing, came a voice,'I brought a message here from Lady Blanche.'Back started she, and turning round we sawThe 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 colour) with her lips apart,And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes,As bottom agates seen to wave and floatIn 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 meI 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 twoWere always friends, none closer, elm and vine:But yet your mother's jealous temperament--Let not your prudence, dearest, drowse, or proveThe Danaïd of a leaky vase, for fearThis whole foundation ruin, and I loseMy honour, 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 thingsThat Sheba came to ask of Solomon.''Be it so' the other, 'that we still may leadThe new light up, and culminate in peace,For Solomon may come to Sheba yet.'Said Cyril, 'Madam, he the wisest manFeasted the woman wisest then, in hallsOf Lebanonian cedar: nor should you(Though, Madam, you should answer, we would ask)Less welcome find among us, if you cameAmong us, debtors for our lives to you,Myself for something more.' He said not what,But 'Thanks,' she answered 'Go: we have been too longTogether: keep your hoods about the face;They do so that affect abstraction here.Speak little; mix not with the rest; and holdYour promise: all, I trust, may yet be well.'

We turned to go, but Cyril took the child,And held her round the knees against his waist,And blew the swollen cheek of a trumpeter,While Psyche watched them, smiling, and the childPushed her flat hand against his face and laughed;And thus our conference closed.And then we strolledFor half the day through stately theatresBenched crescent-wise. In each we sat, we heardThe grave Professor. On the lecture slateThe circle rounded under female handsWith flawless demonstration: followed thenA classic lecture, rich in sentiment,With scraps of thunderous Epic lilted outBy violet-hooded Doctors, elegiesAnd quoted odes, and jewels five-words-longThat on the stretched forefinger of all TimeSparkle for ever: then we dipt in allThat 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!' answered Florian; 'have you learntNo more from Psyche's lecture, you that talkedThe 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 in 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 lovesFly twanging headless arrows at the hearts,Whence follows many a vacant pang; but OWith me, Sir, entered in the bigger boy,The Head of all the golden-shafted firm,The long-limbed lad that had a Psyche too;He cleft me through the stomacher; and nowWhat think you of it, Florian? do I chaseThe substance or the shadow? will it hold?I have no sorcerer's malison on me,No ghostly hauntings like his Highness. IFlatter myself that always everywhereI know the substance when I see it. Well,Are castles shadows? Three of them? Is sheThe sweet proprietress a shadow? If not,Shall those three castles patch my tattered 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 zoneUnmanned me: then the Doctors! O to hearThe Doctors! O to watch the thirsty plantsImbibing! 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 meetStar-sisters answering under crescent brows;Abate the stride, which speaks of man, and looseA flying charm of blushes o'er this cheek,Where they like swallows coming out of timeWill wonder why they came: but hark the bellFor dinner, let us go!'And in we streamedAmong the columns, pacing staid and stillBy twos and threes, till all from end to endWith beauties every shade of brown and fairIn colours gayer than the morning mist,The long hall glittered like a bed of flowers.How might a man not wander from his witsPierced through with eyes, but that I kept mine ownIntent on her, who rapt in glorious dreams,The second-sight of some Astræan age,Sat compassed with professors: they, the while,Discussed a doubt and tost it to and fro:A clamour thickened, mixt with inmost termsOf art and science: Lady Blanche aloneOf faded form and haughtiest lineaments,With all her autumn tresses falsely brown,Shot sidelong daggers at us, a tiger-catIn act to spring.At last a solemn graceConcluded, and we sought the gardens: thereOne walked reciting by herself, and oneIn this hand held a volume as to read,And smoothed a petted peacock down with that:Some to a low song oared a shallop by,Or under arches of the marble bridgeHung, shadowed from the heat: some hid and soughtIn the orange thickets: others tost a ballAbove the fountain-jets, and back againWith laughter: others lay about the lawns,Of the older sort, and murmured that their MayWas passing: what was learning unto them?They wished to marry; they could rule a house;Men hated learned women: but we threeSat muffled like the Fates; and often cameMelissa hitting all we saw with shaftsOf gentle satire, kin to charity,That harmed not: then day droopt; the chapel bellsCalled us: we left the walks; we mixt with thoseSix 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 through the courtA long melodious thunder to the soundOf solemn psalms, and silver litanies,The work of Ida, to call down from HeavenA blessing on her labours for the world.

Sweet and low, sweet and low,Wind of the western sea,Low, low, breathe and blow,Wind of the western sea!Over the rolling waters go,Come from the dying moon, and blow,Blow him again to me;While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.

Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,Father will come to thee soon;Rest, rest, on mother's breast,Father will come to thee soon;Father will come to his babe in the nest,Silver sails all out of the westUnder the silver moon:Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.