"Alone,” I said, "from earlier than I know, Or pines in sad experience worse than death, Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce With such a mother! faith in womankind Said Ida, tremulously, "so all unlike "But I," It seems you love to cheat yourself with words: 315 This mother is your model. I have heard Of your strange doubts: they well might be: I seem A mockery to my own self. Never, Prince; You cannot love me." "Nay but thee," I said, "From yearlong poring on thy pictured eyes, 320 Ere seen I loved, and loved thee seen, and saw Thee woman thro' the crust of iron moods That mask'd thee from men's reverence up, and forced Sweet love on pranks of saucy boyhood: now, Giv'n back to life, to life indeed, thro' thee, 325 Indeed I love: the new day comes, the light Dearer for night, as dearer thou for faults Lived over: lift thine eyes; my doubts are dead, My haunting sense of hollow shows: the change, This truthful change in thee has kill'd it. Dear, 330 Look up, and let thy nature strike on mine, Like yonder morning on the blind half-world; Approach and fear not; breathe upon my brows; In that fine air I tremble, all the past Melts mist-like into this bright hour, and this 335 Is morn to more, and all the rich to-come Reels, as the golden Autumn woodland reels And so thro' those dark gates across the wild CONCLUSION So closed our tale, of which I give you all The random scheme as wildly as it rose: The words are mostly mine; for when we ceased There came a minute's pause, and Walter said, 5 "I wish she had not yielded!" then to me, "What, if you drest it up poetically!" So pray'd the men, the women: I gave assent: Yet how to bind the scatter'd scheme of seven Together in one sheaf? What style could suit? 10 The men required that I should give throughout That sort of mock-heroic gigantesque, With which we banter'd little Lilia first: The women and perhaps they felt their power, For something in the ballads which they sang, 15 Or in their silent influence as they sat, Had ever seem'd to wrestle with burlesque, And drove us, last, to quite a solemn close They hated banter, wish'd for something real, A gallant fight, a noble princess - why 20 Not make her true-heroic-true-sublime? Or all, they said, as earnest as the close? Which yet with such a framework scarce could be. Then rose a little feud betwixt the two, Betwixt the mockers and the realists: 25 And I, betwixt them both, to please them both, And yet to give the story as it rose, |