So stood that same fair creature at the door. Then Lady Psyche, 'Ah - Melissa — you! You heard us?' and Melissa, 'O, pardon me! I 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 two Were always friends, none closer, elm and vine; But yet your mother's jealous temperament Let not your prudence, dearest, drowse, or prove The Danaïd of a leaky vase, for fear
This whole foundation ruin, and I lose
My honor, these their lives.' 'Ah, fear
not,'
Replied Melissa; 'no-I would not tell,
No, not for all Aspasia's cleverness,
No, not to answer, madam, all those hard things
That Sheba came to ask of Solomon.'
'Be it so,' the other, 'that we still may lead
The new light up, and culminate in peace,
For Solomon may come to Sheba yet.'
Said Cyril, Madam, he the wisest man
Feasted the woman wisest then, in halls
Of Lebanonian cedar; nor should you -
Tho', madam, you should answer, we would ask
Less welcome find among us, if you came
Among us, debtors for our lives to you,
Myself for something more.' He said not what,
But Thanks,' she answer'd, 'go; we have been
Together; keep your hoods about the face;
They do so that affect abstraction here.
Speak little; mix not with the rest; and hold
Your promise. All, I trust, may yet be well.'’
We turn'd 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 watch'd them, smiling, and the child Push'd her flat hand against his face and laugh'd; And thus our conference closed.
For half the day thro' stately theatres
Bench'd crescent-wise. In each we sat, we heard
The grave professor. On the lecture slate
The circle rounded under female hands
With flawless demonstration; follow'd then
A classic lecture, rich in sentiment,
With scraps of thunderous epic lilted out
By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies
And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long
That on the stretch'd forefinger of all Time
Sparkle forever. Then we dipt in all
That 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!' answer'd Florian; have you learnt
No more from Psyche's lecture, you that talk'd
The 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 if 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 loves
Fly twanging headless arrows at the hearts,
Whence follows many a vacant pang; but O,
With me, sir, enter'd in the bigger boy,
The head of all the golden-shafted firm,
The long-limb'd lad that had a Psyche too;
He cleft me thro' the stomacher.
And now
What think you of it, Florian? do I chase
The substance or the shadow? will it hold?
I have no sorcerer's malison on me,
No ghostly hauntings like his Highness. I
Flatter myself that always everywhere
I know the substance when I see it. Well,
Are castles shadows? Three of them?
The sweet proprietress a shadow? If not,
Shall those three castles patch my tatter'd 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 zone
Unmann'd me. Then the Doctors! O, to hear
The Doctors! O, to watch the thirsty plants
Imbibing! 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 meet
Star-sisters answering under crescent brows;
Abate the stride which speaks of man, and loose
A flying charm of blushes o'er this cheek,
Where they like swallows coming out of time
Will wonder why they came.
Among the columns, pacing staid and still
By twos and threes, till all from end to end
With beauties every shade of brown and fair
In colors gayer than the morning mist,
The long hall glitter'd like a bed of flowers.
How might a man not wander from his wits
Pierced thro' with eyes, but that I kept mine own
Intent on her, who rapt in glorious dreams,
The second-sight of some Astræan age,
Sat compass'd with professors; they, the while,
Discuss'd a doubt and tost it to and fro.
A clamor thicken'd, mixt with inmost terms
Of art and science; Lady Blanche alone
Of faded form and haughtiest lineaments,
With all her autumn tresses falsely brown,
Shot sidelong daggers at us, a tiger-cat
In act to spring.
Concluded, and we sought the gardens. There
One walk'd reciting by herself, and one
In this hand held a volume as to read,
And smoothed a petted peacock down with that. Some to a low song oar'd a shallop by,
Or under arches of the marble bridge
Hung, shadow'd from the heat; some hid and sought
In the orange thickets; others tost a ball
Above the fountain-jets, and back again
With laughter; others lay about the lawns,
Of the older sort, and murmur'd that their May
Was passing what was learning unto them?
They wish'd to marry; they could rule a house;
Men hated learned women. But we three
Sat muffled like the Fates; and often came
Melissa hitting all we saw with shafts
Of gentle satire, kin to charity,
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