CANTO VII.

THE song has prepared us for the "last scene of all."

"So was their sanctuary violated,

So their fair college turned to hospital;"

These and the succeeding beautiful lines show us the complete transformation of the college into a hospital for the wounded knights. are the nurses.

"And everywhere

'Low voices with the ministering hand

The ladies

Hung round the sick the maidens came, they talk d

They sang, they read; till she not fair, began

To gather light, and she that was, became
Her former beauty treble; and to and fro
With books, with flowers, with Angel offices,
Like creatures native unto gracious act,

And in their own clear element they moved."

Lady Blanche has left the Palace, but willing that Melissa should keep Court favour, she has left her with the Princess.

Psyche and Melissa have been nursing poor Florian, and the result, so far as Melissa and Florian are concerned, says the poet, is not altogether to be wondered at.

"Nor seem'd it strange that soon
Ile rose up whole and those fair charities

Join'd at her side, nor stranger seemed that hearts
So gentle, so employ'd should close in love,
Than when two dewdrops on the petal shake

To the same sweet air, and tremble deeper down.
And slip at once all fragrant into one."

Cyril's suit did not fare quite so prosperously at first. In spite of his good offices in restoring to Psyche her babe, and though she liked him, she feared to incense Ida once more; but one day when Cyril was pleading his cause—

"Ida came behind,

Seen but of Psyche: on her foot she hung.
A moment, and she heard, at which her face
A little flush'd and she past on; but each
Assum'd from thence a half-consent involved
In stillness, plighted troth, and were at peace."

The way is thus being artistically prepared for the grand finale, and the whole attention of the reader is now allowed to centre upon the Prince and Ida :

"But sadness on the soul of Ida fell,

And hatred of her weakness, blent with shame.
Old studies fail'd: seldom she spoke; but oft
Clomb to the roofs, and gazed alone for hours
On that disastrous leaguer, swarms of men
Darkening her female field.

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till down she came,

And found fair peace once more among the sick."

Poor Ida! The poet insists that she shall have

our sympathy, and in such a passage as the above, part only of which is here quoted, he draws us close to her.

Both her father and brother uphold the Prince's suit, now that he is too ill to speak for himself. But the Princess tends her lover in vain. Through long unconsciousness he passes into the delirium of fever and her name is constantly on his lips. Very truthful and delicate is Tennyson's narration of how gradually

"a closer interest flourish'd up,
Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these
Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears
By some cold morning glacier; frail at first
And feeble, all unconscious of itself,

But such as gather'd colour day by day.”

Finally in the still summer night, consciousness returns; and nearer death than life the Prince sees Ida at his bedside. In the subdued whisper of intense weakness he murmurs:

"If you be, what I think you, some sweet dream,

I would but ask you to fulfil yourself:

But if you be that Ida whom I knew,

I ask you nothing: only, if a dream,

Sweet dream, be perfect. I shall die to-night.
Stoop down and seem to kiss me ere I die.'"

And now at last Love and Nature prove themselves too strong for Ida: the Prince's devotion is rewarded. His final impassioned effort is almost tragic.

The passage in which Ida acknowledges her defeat is exquisite throughout. In a voice trembling with emotion,

"she said

Brokenly, that she knew it, she had fail'd

In sweet humility; had failed in all :

And she had nursed me there from week to week:
Much had she learnt in little time. In part
It was ill counsel had misled the girl
To vex true hearts: yet was she but a girl-
'Ah fool, and made myself a Queen of farce!
When comes another such? Never, I think,
Till the Sun drop dead from the signs.'"

These passages, and many more too long to be here inserted, are all intensely pathetic. One night the Prince lies half awake, and hears her reading in an undertone from a volume of the poets of the land that beautiful song commencing

"Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white; followed by another song :

"Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height.'"

Of these songs the Rev. Charles Kingsley writes:

“Who, after reading such lines, will talk of English as a harsh and clumsy language, and seek in the effiminate and monotonous Italian for expressive melody of sound?"

In the mutual explanations which follow this satisfactory understanding between the Prince and Ida, the character of the former is well portrayed.

He is in full sympathy with Ida. He aims at elevating woman, but he differs as to means. He recognises that their ultimate aims must correspond with the diversity of their natures. Ida dreams of intellectual elevation only. The Prince sees clearly that moral elevation is the higher of the two. But he is from henceforth enlisted with Ida:

"Henceforth thou hast a helper, me, that know The woman's cause is man's; they rise or sink Together.

If she be small, slight-natured, miserable,
How shall men grow?'"

Working in unison, he says, "we too"

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'Will clear away the parasitic forms

That seem to keep her up, but drag her down.'"

Here follows a beautiful passage which strikes straight at the root of the moot question, and combats the theory that woman is just man imperfectly developed, and inferior only, both physically and mentally, owing to generations of neglect and oppression. It is one of the cardinal passages of the poem :

"For woman is not undevelopt man,

But diverse; could we make her as the man,
Sweet Love were slain his dearest bond is this,
Not like to like, but like in difference.'"

And here is a picture of the mutual influences in married life: