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.

But we

Set forth to climb; then, climbing, Cyril kept

With Psyche, with Melissa Florian, I

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

No bigger than a glowworm shone the tent
Lamp-lit from the inner. Once she lean'd on

me,

Descending; once or twice she lent her hand,

And blissful palpitations in the blood
Stirring a sudden transport rose and fell.

But when we planted level feet, and dipt
Beneath the satin dome and enter'd in,
There leaning deep in broider'd down we sank
Our elbows; on a tripod in the midst

A fragrant flame rose, and before us glow'd
Fruit, blossom, viand, amber wine, and gold.

Then she, Let some one sing to us; lightlier

move

The minutes fledged with music;' and a maid,
Of those beside her, smote her harp and sang.

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds

To dying ears, when unto dying eyes

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

• Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret ;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!'

She ended with such passion that the tear
She sang of shook and fell, an erring pearl
Lost in her bosom; but with some disdain
Answer'd the Princess: If indeed there haunt
About the moulder'd lodges of the past

So sweet a voice and vague, fatal to men,

Well needs it we should cram our ears with wool
And so pace by. But thine are fancies hatch'd
In silken-folded idleness; nor is it

Wiser to weep a true occasion lost,

But trim our sails, and let old bygones be,

While down the streams that float us each and all To the issue, goes, like glittering bergs of ice, Throne after throne, and molten on the waste Becomes a cloud; for all things serve their time Toward that great year of equal mights and rights. Nor would I fight with iron laws, in the end Found golden. Let the past be past, let be