They with the sun and moon renew their light
For ever, blessing those that look on them.
Children - that men may pluck them from our
hearts,

Kill us with pity, break us with ourselves

O children there is nothing upon earth
More miserable than she that has a son

And sees him err.

Tho' she perhaps
Great,

Nor would we work for fame;

might reap the applause of

Who learns the one POU STO whence after-hands
May move the world, tho' she herself effect
But little; wherefore up and act, nor shrink
For fear our solid aim be dissipated

By frail successors. Would, indeed, we had been,
In lieu of many mortal flies, a race

Of giants living each a thousand years,

That we might see our own work out, and watch The sandy footprint harden into stone.'

I answer'd nothing, doubtful in myself If that strange poet-princess with her grand Imaginations might at all be won.

And she broke out interpreting my thoughts:

'No doubt we seem a kind of monster to you; We are used to that; for women, up till this Cramp'd under worse than South-sea-isle taboo, Dwarfs of the gynæceum, fail so far

In high desire, they know not, cannot guess
How much their welfare is a passion to us.
If we could give them surer, quicker proof-
O, if our end were less achievable

By slow approaches than by single act
Of immolation, any phase of death,

We were as prompt to spring against the pikes,
Or down the fiery gulf as talk of it,
To compass our dear sisters' liberties.'

She bow'd as if to veil a noble tear;

And up we came to where the river sloped
To plunge in cataract, shattering on black blocks

A breadth of thunder.

O'er it shook the woods,

And danced the color, and, below, stuck out

The bones of some vast bulk that lived and roar'd

Before man was. She gazed awhile and said, 'As these rude bones to us, are we to her That will be.' 'Dare we dream of that,' I ask'd, 'Which wrought us, as the workman and his work, That practice betters?' How,' she cried, you ‹

love

The metaphysics! read and earn our prize,
A golden brooch. Beneath an emerald plane
Sits Diotima, teaching him that died

Of hemlock - our device, wrought to the life—
She rapt upon her subject, he on her;

For there are schools for all.' And yet,' I said, 'Methinks I have not found among

them all

One anatomic.' Nay, we thought of that,'
She answer'd, but it pleased us not; in truth
We shudder but to dream our maids should ape
Those monstrous males that carve the living hound,
And cram him with the fragments of the grave,
Or in the dark dissolving human heart,
And holy secrets of this microcosm,
Dabbling a shameless hand with shameful jest,
Encarnalize their spirits. Yet we know
Knowledge is knowledge, and this matter hangs.
Howbeit ourself, foreseeing casualty,

Nor willing men should come among us, learnt,
For many weary moons before we came,

This craft of healing.
Would tend upon you.

Which touches on the

Were you sick, ourself

To your question now, workman and his work.

Let there be light and there was light; 't is so,
For was, and is, and will be, are but is,

And all creation is one act at once,

The birth of light; but we that are not all,

As parts, can see but parts, now this, now that, And live, perforce, from thought to thought, and

make

One act a phantom of succession.

Thus

Our weakness somehow shapes the shadow, Time; But in the shadow will we work, and mould

The woman to the fuller day.'

She spake

With kindled eyes: we rode a league beyond,

And, o'er a bridge of pinewood crossing, came
On flowery levels underneath the crag,
Full of all beauty. O, how sweet,' I said,
For I was half-oblivious of my mask,-

To linger here with one that loved us!' Yea,' She answer'd, or with fair philosophies

That lift the fancy; for indeed these fields
Are lovely, lovelier not the Elysian lawns,
Where paced the demigods of old, and saw
The soft white vapor streak the crowned towers
Built to the Sun.' Then, turning to her maids,
'Pitch our pavilion here upon the sward;
Lay out the viands.' At the word, they raised
A tent of satin, elaborately wrought
With fair Corinna's triumph; here she stood,
Engirt with many a florid maiden-cheek,
The woman-conqueror; woman-conquer'd there
The bearded Victor of ten-thousand hymns,
And all the men mourn'd at his side.
Set forth to climb; then, climbing, Cyril kept

With Psyche, with Melissa Florian, I

But we

With mine affianced. Many a little hand
Glanced like a touch of sunshine on the rocks,
Many a light foot shone like a jewel set

In the dark crag. And then we turn'd, we wound
About the cliffs, the copses, out and in,
Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names
Of shale and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff,
Amygdaloid and trachyte, till the sun

Grew broader toward his death and fell, and all The rosy heights came out above the lawns.

The splendor falls on castle walls

And

snowy

summits old in story;

The long light shakes across the lakes,

And the wild cataract leaps in glory.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O, hark, O, hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!

O, sweet and far from cliff and scar

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!

Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,

They faint on hill or field or river;
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,

And grow for ever and for ever.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

IV

There sinks the nebulous star we call the sun,

If that hypothesis of theirs be sound,'
Said Ida; let us down and rest;' and we
Down from the lean and wrinkled precipices,
By every coppice-feather'd chasm and cleft,
Dropt thro' the ambrosial gloom to where below