A prince, a brother? a little will I yield. Best so, perchance, for us, and well for you. O hard, when love and duty clash! I fear My conscience will not count me fleckless; yetHear my conditions: promise (otherwise You perish) as you came, to slip away To-day, to-morrow, soon: it shall be said, These women were too barbarous, would not learn; They fled, who might have shamed us: promise, all." What could we else, we promised each; and she, Like some wild creature newly-caged, commenced A to-and-fro, so pacing till she paused By Florian; holding out her lily arms Took both his hands, and smiling faintly said: My needful seeming harshness, pardon it. Our mother, is she well? With that she kiss'd His forehead, then, a moment after, clung About him, and betwixt them blossom'd up From out a common vein of memory Sweet household talk, and phrases of the hearth, And far allusion, till the gracious dews Began to glisten and to fall: and while They stood, so rapt, we gazing, came a voice, 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 : This whole foundation ruin, and I lose My honour, these their lives. "Ah, fear me 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 For Solomon may come to Sheba yet." 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 too long Together: keep your hoods about the face; Speak little; mix not with the rest; and hold We turn'd to go, but Cyril took the child, And held her round the knees against his waist, And blew the swoll'n 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. And then we stroll'd 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 thundrous Epic lilted out By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long 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? |