Then Florian knelt, and "Come," he whispered to her,
"Lift up your head, sweet sister: lie not thus.
What have you done but right? you could not slay
Me, nor your prince: look up: be comforted:
Sweet is it to have done the thing one ought,
When fallen in darker ways." And likewise I:
"Be comforted: have I not lost her too,
In whose least act abides the nameless charm
That none has else for me." She heard, she moved,
She moaned, a folded voice; and up she sat,
And raised the cloak from brows as pale and smooth
As those that mourn half-shrouded over death
In deathless marble, Her," she said, "my
Parted from her-betrayed her cause and mineWhere shall I breathe? why kept ye not your faith?
O base and bad! what comfort? none for me!" To whom remorseful Cyril, "Yet I pray
Take comfort live, dear lady, for your child,"
At which she lifted up her voice and cried.
"Ah me, my babe, my blossom, ah my child,
My one sweet child, whom I shall see no more!
For now will cruel Ida keep her back;
And either she will die from want of care,
Or sicken with ill usage, when they say
The child is hers-for every little fault,
The child is hers; and they will beat my girl,
Remembering her mother: oh my flower!
Or they will take her, they will make her hard,
And she will pass me by in after-life
With some cold reverence worse than were she
Ill mother that I was to leave her there,
To lag behind, scared by the cry they made,
The horror of the shame among them all:
But I will go and sit beside the doors,
And make a wild petition night and day,
Until they hate to hear me like a wind
Wailing forever, till they open to me,
And lay my little blossom at my feet,
My babe, my sweet Aglaïa, my one child:
And I will take her up and go my way,
And satisfy my soul with kissing her :
Ah! what might that man not deserve of me,
Who gave me back my child?” "Be comforted."
Said Cyril," you shall have it:" but again
She veiled her brows, and prone she sank, and so
Like tender things that being caught feign death,
Spoke not, nor stirred.
By this a murmur ran Through all the camp, and inward raced the scouts With rumor of Prince Arac hard at hand.
We left her by the woman, and without
Found the gray kings at parle: and “Look you,” cried
My father," that our compact be fulfilled:
You have spoilt this child; she laughs at you and
She wrongs herself, her sex, and me, and him.
But red-faced war has rods of steel and fire;
She yields, or war."
“We fear, indeed, you spent a stormy time
With our strange girl: and yet they say that still
You love her. Give us, then, your mind at large :
How say you, war or not?"
"Not war, if possible, O King," I said, "lest from the abuse of war, The desecrated shrine, the trampled year,
The smouldering homestead, and the household flower
Torn from the lintel-all the common wrong-
A smoke go up through which I loom to her
Three times a monster: now she lightens scorn
At him that mars her plan, but then would hate
(And every voice she talked with ratify it,
And every face she looked on justify it)
The general foe. More soluble is this knot
By gentleness than war. I want her love.
What were I nigher this, although we dashed
Your cities into shards with catapults;
She would not love; or brought her chained, a slave,
The lifting of whose eyelash is my lord,
Not ever would she love; but brooding turn
The book of scorn, till all my little chance
Were caught within the record of her wrongs,
And crushed to death; and rather, Sire, than this,
I would the old God of war himself were dead,
Forgotten, rusting on his iron hills,
Rotting on some wild shore with ribs of wreck,
Or like an old-world mammoth bulked in ice,
Not to be molten out."
My father, "Tut, you know them not, the girls.
Boy, when I hear you prate I almost think
That idiot legend credible. Look you, Sir!
Man is the hunter; woman is his game;
The sleek and shining creatures of the chase,
We hunt them for the beauty of their skins;
They love us for it, and we ride them down.
Wheedling and siding with them! Out! for shame!
Boy, there's no rose that's half so dear to them
As he that does the thing they dare not do,
Breathing and sounding beauteous battle, comes
With the air of the trumpet round him, and leaps in
Among the women, snares them by the score,
Flattered and flustered, wins, though dashed with
death
He reddens what he kisses; thus I won
Your mother, a good mother, a good wife,
Worth winning; but this firebrand---gentleness
To such as her! if Cyril spake her true,
To catch a dragon in a cherry net,
To trip a tigress with a gossamer,
Were wisdom to it."
"Yea, but Sire," I cried,
"Wild natures need wise curbs. The soldier?
What dares not Ida do that she should prize
The soldier? I beheld her, when she rose
The yesternight, and storming in extremes
Stood for her cause, and flung defiance down
Gagelike to man and had not shunned the death,
No, not the soldier's: yet I hold her, King,
True woman but you clash them all in one,
That have as many differences as we.
The violet varies from the lily as far
As oak from elm: one loves the soldier, one
The silken priest of peace, one this, one that,
And some unworthily; their sinless faith,
A maiden moon that sparkles or a sty,
Glorifying clown and satyr; whence they need
More breadth of culture: is not Ida right?
They worth it? truer to the law within?
Severer in the logic of a life?
Twice as magnetic to sweet influences
Of Earth and Heaven? and she of whom you speak,
My mother, looks as whole as some serene
Creation minted in the golden moods
Of sovereign artists; not a thought, a touch,
But pure as lines of green that streak the white
Of the first snowdrop's inner leaves; I say
Not like the piebald miscellany, man,
Bursts of great heart and slips in sensual mire,
But whole and one: and take them all-in-all,
Were we ourselves but half as good, as kind,
As truthful, much that Ida claims as right
Had ne'er been mooted, but as frankly theirs
As dues of Nature. To our point: not war:
Lest I lose all."
“Nay, nay, you spake but sense,' Said Gama. "We remember love ourselves In our sweet youth: we did not rate him then This red-hot iron to be shaped with blows. You talk almost like Ida: she can talk; And there is something in it as you say: But you talk kindlier: we esteem you for it.He seems a gracious and a gallant prince, I would he had our daughter: for the rest, Our own detention, why the causes weighed, Fatherly fears-you used us courteouslyWe would do much to gratify your PrinceWe pardon it; and for your ingress here Upon the skirt and fringe of our fair land, You did but come as goblins in the night, Nor in the furrow broke the ploughman's head, Nor burnt the grange, nor bussed the milking-maid. Nor robbed the farmer of his bowl of cream: But let your Prince (our royal word upon it, He comes back safe) ride with us to our lines, And speak with Arac: Arac's word is thrice As ours with Ida: something may be doneI know not what-and ours shall see us friends. You, likewise, our late guests, if so you will, Follow us: who knows? we four may build some plan Foursquare to opposition."
White hands of farewell to my sire, who growled
An answer which, half-muffled in his beard,
Let so much out as gave us leave to go.
Then rode we with the old king across the lawns
Beneath huge trees, a thousand rings of Spring
In every bole, a song on every spray
Of birds that piped their Valentines, and woke
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