'Come hither.

O Psyche,' she cried out, 'embrace me,

come,

Quick while I melt; make reconcilement

sure

With one that cannot keep her mind an hour:

Come to the hollow heart they slander so! Kiss and be friends, like children being chid !

I seem no more: I want 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 more

With 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 have

Free adit; we will scatter all our maids Till 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

that

Which kills me with myself, and drags me down

From my fixt height to mob me up with

The soft and milky rabble of womankind, Poor weakling ev'n as they are.'

Passionate tears Follow'd the king replied not: Cyril said:

'Your brother, Lady,-Florian,-ask for him

Of 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, Petition'd too for him. 'Ay so,' she said,

'I stagger in the stream: I cannot keep My 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 hear

Your Highness: but your Highness breaks with ease

The law your Highness did not make : 'twas I.

I had been wedded wife, I knew mankind, And block'd them out; but these men

came to woo

Your Highness-verily I think to win.'

So she, and turn'd askance a wintry eye: But Ida with a voice, that like a bell Toll'd by an earthquake in a trembling

tower,

Rang ruin, answer'd full of grief and scorn.

'Fling our doors wide! all, all, not

one, but all,

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 base

Had 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 turn'd; the very nape of her white neck

Was rosed with indignation: but the Prince

Her brother came; the king her father

charm'd

Her wounded soul with words: nor did mine own

Refuse her proffer, lastly gave his hand.

Then us they lifted up, dead weights,

and bare

Straight to the doors: to them the doors

gave way

Groaning, and in the Vestal entry shriek'd
The virgin marble under iron heels :
And on they moved and gain'd the hall,
and there

Rested but great the crush was, and

each base,

To left and right, of those tall columns drown'd

In silken fluctuation and the swarm

Of female whisperers: at the further end Was Ida by the throne, the two great cats Close by her, like supporters on a shield, Bow-back'd with fear but in the centre

stood

The common men with rolling eyes; amazed

They glared upon the women, and aghast The women stared at these, all silent, save When armour clash'd or jingled, while the day,

Descending, struck athwart the hall, and shot

A 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 died

Of fright in far apartments.

Then the voice Of Ida sounded, issuing ordinance : And me they bore up the broad stairs, and thro'

The long-laid galleries past a hundred doors

To one deep chamber shut from sound, and due

To languid limbs and sickness; left me in it;

And others otherwhere they laid; and all That afternoon a sound arose of hoof And chariot, many a maiden passing home Till happier times; but some were left of those

Held sagest, and the great lords out and in,

From those two hosts that lay beside the walls,

Walk'd at their will, and everything was changed.

VII.

Ask me no more: the moon may draw the sea; The cloud may stoop from heaven and take the shape,

With fold to fold, of mountain or of cape; But O too fond, when have I answer'd thee? Ask me no more.

Ask me no more: what answer should I give? I love not hollow cheek or faded eye :

Yet, O my friend, I will not have thee die ! Ask me no more, lest I should bid thee live ; Ask me no more.

Ask me no more: thy fate and mine are seal'd:
I strove against the stream and all in vain :
Let the great river take me to the main :
No more,
dear love, for at a touch I yield;
Ask me no more.

So was their sanctuary violated,
So their fair college turn'd to hospital;
At first with all confusion: by and bye
Sweet order lived again with other laws :
A kindlier influence reign'd; and every-
where

Low voices with the ministering hand Hung round the sick : the maidens came, they talk'd,

They sang, they read: till she not fair began

To gather light, and she that was, became Her former beauty treble; and to and fro 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 fail'd; seldom she spoke but oft

Clomb to the roofs, and gazed alone for hours

On that disastrous leaguer, swarms of men Darkening her female field: void was her

use,

And she as one that climbs a peak to gaze O'er land and main, and sees a great black cloud

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

tarn

Expunge the world: so fared she gazing there;

So blacken'd all her world in secret, blank And waste it seem'd and vain; till down she came,

And found fair peace once more among the sick.

And twilight dawn'd; and morn by morn the lark

Shot up and shrill'd in flickering gyres, but I

Lay silent in the muffled cage of life : And twilight gloom'd; and broader

grown the bowers

Drew the great night into themselves, and Heaven,

Star after star, arose and fell; but I, Deeper than those weird doubts could

reach me, lay

Quite sunder'd from the moving Universe, Nor knew what eye was on me, nor the

hand

That nursed me, more than infants in their sleep.

But Psyche tended Florian: with her

oft,

Melissa came; for Blanche had gone, but left

Her child among us, willing she should keep

Court-favour: here and there the small

bright head,

A light of healing, glanced about the

couch,

Or thro' the parted silks the tender face

Peep'd, shining in upon the wounded man With blush and smile, a medicine in themselves

To wile the length from languorous hours, and draw

The sting from pain; nor seem'd it strange that soon

He rose up whole, and those fair charities Join'd at her side; nor stranger seem'd that hearts

So gentle, so employ'd, should close in love,

Than when two dewdrops on the petal shake

To the same sweet air, and tremble deeper down,

And slip at once all-fragrant into one.

Less prosperously the second suit ob

tain'd

At first with Psyche. Not tho' Blanche

had sworn

That after that dark night among the fields She needs must wed him for her own good

name;

Not tho' he built upon the babe restored; Nor tho' she liked him, yielded she, but fear'd

To incense the Head once more; till on a day

When Cyril pleaded, Ida came behind Seen but of Psyche: on her foot she hung A moment, and she heard, at which her face

A little flush'd, and she past on; but each Assumed from thence a half-consent involved

In stillness, plighted troth, and were at peace.

Nor only these: Love in the sacred halls

Held carnival at will, and flying struck

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 yet

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 catch

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, tho' I knew her not, And call her sweet, as if in irony, And call her hard and cold which seem'd a truth:

And still she fear'd 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 clocks

Throbb'd thunder thro' the palace floors,

or call'd

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 heartAnd out of hauntings of my spoken love, And lonely listenings to my mutter'd dream,

And often feeling of the helpless hands, And wordless broodings on the wasted

cheek

From all a closer interest flourish'd up, Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these,