Erect behind a desk of satin-wood,
A quick brunette, well-moulded, falcon-eyed, And on the hither side, or so she look'd, 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 no livelier than the dame That whisper'd' Asses' ears' among the sedge, 'My sister.' 'Comely, too, by all that 's fair,' Said Cyril. O, 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 cast The planets; then the monster, then the man ; Tattoo'd or woaded, winter-clad in skins,
Raw from the prime, and crushing down his mate, As yet we find in barbarous isles, and here Among the lowest.'
A bird's-eye view of all the ungracious past; Glanced at the legendary Amazon As emblematic of a nobler age;
Appraised the Lycian custom, spoke of those That lay at wine with Lar and Lucumo; Ran down the Persian, Grecian, Roman lines Of empire, and the woman's state in each, How far from just; till warming with her theme
She fulmined out her scorn of laws Salique And little-footed China, touch'd on Mahomet With much contempt, and came to chivalry, When some respect, however slight, was paid To woman, superstition all awry.
However, then commenced the dawn; a beam Had slanted forward, falling in a land
Of promise; fruit would follow. Deep, indeed, Their debt of thanks to her who first had dared To leap the rotten pales of prejudice,
Disyoke their necks from custom, and assert
None lordlier than themselves but that which made Woman 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 grew With using; thence the man's, if more was more. He took advantage of his strength to be First in the field; some ages had been lost; But woman ripen'd earlier, and her life Was longer; and albeit their glorious names Were fewer, scatter'd stars, yet since in truth The 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 so
With woman; and in arts of government Elizabeth and others, arts of war
The peasant Joan and others, arts of grace Sappho and others vied with any man;
And, last not least, she who had left her place, And bow'd her state to them, that they might grow
To use and power on this oasis, lapt
In the arms of leisure, sacred from the blight Of ancient influence and scorn.
She rose upon a wind of prophecy
Dilating on the future: everywhere
Two 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 abyss Of science and the secrets of the mind; Musician, painter, sculptor, critic, more; And everywhere the broad and bounteous Earth Should bear a double growth of those rare souls, Poets, whose thoughts enrich the blood of the world.'
She ended here, and beckon'd us; the rest Parted; and, glowing full-faced welcome, she Began to address us, and was moving on In gratulation, till as when a boat
Tacks and the slacken'd sail flaps, all her voice Faltering and fluttering in her throat, she cried,
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 answer'd.
How saw you not the inscription on the gate, LET NO MAN ENTER IN ON PAIN OF DEATH? And if I had,' he answer'd, who could think The softer Adams of your Academe,
O sister, Sirens tho' they be, were such As chanted on the blanching bones of men?' • But you will find it otherwise,' she said. You jest; ill jesting with edge-tools! my vow Binds me to speak, and O that iron will, That axelike edge unturnable, our Head, The Princess! And nail me like a weasel on a grange For 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 seen And heard the Lady Psyche.'
Well then, Psyche, take my life,
'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,
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,
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