She answer'd, then ye know the Prince?' and he:
'The climax of his age! as tho' there were
One rose in all the world, your Highness that,
He worships your ideal.' She replied:

'We scarcely thought in our own hall to hear
This barren verbiage, current among men,
Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment.
Your flight from out your bookless wilds would

seem

As arguing love of knowledge and of power;
Your language proves you still the child. Indeed,
We dream not of him; when we set our hand
To this great work, we purposed with ourself
Never to wed. You likewise will do well,
Ladies, in entering here, to cast and fling
The tricks which make us toys of men, that
Some future time, if so indeed you will,
You may with those self-styled our lords ally
Your fortunes, justlier balanced, scale with scale.'

SO

At those high words, we, conscious of ourselves, Perused the matting; then an officer Rose 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 enter'd 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 she
That taught the Sabine how to rule, and she
The foundress of the Babylonian wall,
The Carian Artemisia strong in war,

The Rhodope that built the pyramid,
Clelia, Cornelia, with the Palmyrene
That fought Aurelian, and the Roman brows.
Of Agrippina. Dwell with these, and lose
Convention, since to look on noble forms
Makes noble thro' the sensuous organism
That which is higher. O, lift your natures up;
Embrace our aims; work out your freedom. Girls,
Knowledge is now no more a fountain seal'd!
Drink deep, until the habits of the slave,
The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite

✓ And slander, die. Better not be at all
Than not be noble.
To-day the Lady Pysche will harangue
The fresh arrivals of the week before;
For they press in from all the provinces,
And fill the hive.'

Leave us; you may go.

She spoke, and bowing waved Dismissal; back again we crost the court To Lady Psyche's. As we enter'd in, There sat along the forms, like morning doves That sun their milky bosoms on the thatch, A patient range of pupils; she herself

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.'

Thereupon she took

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

At last

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,