P A R T   II.

At break of day the College Portress came:

She brought us Academic silks, in hue

The lilac, with a silken hood to each,

And zoned with gold; and now when these were on,

And we as rich as moths from dusk cocoons,

She, curtseying her obeisance, let us know

The Princess Ida waited: out we paced,

I first, and following through the porch that sang

All round with laurel, issued in a court

Compact of lucid marbles, bossed with lengths

Of classic frieze, with ample awnings gay

Betwixt the pillars, and with great urns of flowers.

The Muses and the Graces, grouped in threes,

Enringed a billowing fountain in the midst;

And here and there on lattice edges lay

Or book or lute; but hastily we past,

And up a flight of stairs into the hall.

     There at a board by tome and paper sat,

With two tame leopards couched beside her throne,

All beauty compassed in a female form,

The Princess; liker to the inhabitant

Of some clear planet close upon the Sun,

Than our man's earth; such eyes were in her head,

And so much grace and power, breathing down

From over her arched brows, with every turn

Lived through her to the tips of her long hands,

And to her feet. She rose her height, and said:

     'We give you welcome: not without redound

Of use and glory to yourselves ye come,

The first-fruits of the stranger: aftertime,

And that full voice which circles round the grave,

Will rank you nobly, mingled up with me.

What! are the ladies of your land so tall?'

'We of the court' said Cyril. 'From the court'

She answered, 'then ye know the Prince?' and he:

'The climax of his age! as though there were

One rose in all the world, your Highness that,

He worships your ideal:' she replied:

'We scarcely thought in our own hall to hear

This barren verbiage, current among men,

Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment.

Your flight from out your bookless wilds would seem

As arguing love of knowledge and of power;

Your language proves you still the child. Indeed,

We dream not of him: when we set our hand

To this great work, we purposed with ourself

Never to wed. You likewise will do well,

Ladies, in entering here, to cast and fling

The tricks, which make us toys of men, that so,

Some future time, if so indeed you will,

You may with those self-styled our lords ally

Your fortunes, justlier balanced, scale with scale.'

     At those high words, we conscious of ourselves,

Perused the matting: then an officer

Rose up, and read the statutes, such as these:

Not for three years to correspond with home;

Not for three years to cross the liberties;

Not for three years to speak with any men;

And many more, which hastily subscribed,

We entered on the boards: and 'Now,' she cried,

'Ye are green wood, see ye warp not. Look, our hall!

Our statues!--not of those that men desire,

Sleek Odalisques, or oracles of mode,

Nor stunted squaws of West or East; but she

That taught the Sabine how to rule, and she

The foundress of the Babylonian wall,

The Carian Artemisia strong in war,

The Rhodope, that built the pyramid,

Clelia, Cornelia, with the Palmyrene

That fought Aurelian, and the Roman brows

Of Agrippina. Dwell with these, and lose

Convention, since to look on noble forms

Makes noble through the sensuous organism

That which is higher. O lift your natures up:

Embrace our aims: work out your freedom. Girls,

Knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed:

Drink deep, until the habits of the slave,

The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite

And slander, die. Better not be at all

Than not be noble. Leave us: you may go:

Today the Lady Psyche will harangue

The fresh arrivals of the week before;

For they press in from all the provinces,

And fill the hive.'

                           She spoke, and bowing waved

Dismissal: back again we crost the court

To Lady Psyche's: as we entered in,

There sat along the forms, like morning doves

That sun their milky bosoms on the thatch,

A patient range of pupils; she herself

Erect behind a desk of satin-wood,

A quick brunette, well-moulded, falcon-eyed,

And on the hither side, or so she looked,

Of twenty summers. At her left, a child,

In shining draperies, headed like a star,

Her maiden babe, a double April old,

Aglaïa slept. We sat: the Lady glanced:

Then Florian, but not livelier than the dame

That whispered 'Asses' ears', among the sedge,

'My sister.' 'Comely, too, by all that's fair,'

Said Cyril. 'Oh hush, hush!' and she began.

     'This world was once a fluid haze of light,

Till toward the centre set the starry tides,

And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast

The planets: then the monster, then the man;

Tattooed or woaded, winter-clad in skins,

Raw from the prime, and crushing down his mate;

As yet we find in barbarous isles, and here

Among the lowest.'

                              Thereupon she took

A bird's-eye-view of all the ungracious past;

Glanced at the legendary Amazon

As emblematic of a nobler age;

Appraised the Lycian custom, spoke of those

That lay at wine with Lar and Lucumo;

Ran down the Persian, Grecian, Roman lines

Of empire, and the woman's state in each,

How far from just; till warming with her theme

She fulmined out her scorn of laws Salique

And little-footed China, touched on Mahomet

With much contempt, and came to chivalry:

When some respect, however slight, was paid

To woman, superstition all awry:

However then commenced the dawn: a beam

Had slanted forward, falling in a land

Of promise; fruit would follow. Deep, indeed,

Their debt of thanks to her who first had dared

To leap the rotten pales of prejudice,

Disyoke their necks from custom, and assert

None lordlier than themselves but that which made

Woman and man. She had founded; they must build.

Here might they learn whatever men were taught:

Let them not fear: some said their heads were less:

Some men's were small; not they the least of men;

For often fineness compensated size:

Besides the brain was like the hand, and grew

With using; thence the man's, if more was more;

He took advantage of his strength to be

First in the field: some ages had been lost;

But woman ripened earlier, and her life

Was longer; and albeit their glorious names

Were fewer, scattered stars, yet since in truth

The highest is the measure of the man,

And not the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay,

Nor those horn-handed breakers of the glebe,

But Homer, Plato, Verulam; even so

With woman: and in arts of government

Elizabeth and others; arts of war

The peasant Joan and others; arts of grace

Sappho and others vied with any man:

And, last not least, she who had left her place,

And bowed her state to them, that they might grow

To use and power on this Oasis, lapt

In the arms of leisure, sacred from the blight

Of ancient influence and scorn.

                                              At last

She rose upon a wind of prophecy

Dilating on the future; 'everywhere

Who heads in council, two beside the hearth,

Two in the tangled business of the world,

Two in the liberal offices of life,

Two plummets dropt for one to sound the abyss

Of science, and the secrets of the mind:

Musician, painter, sculptor, critic, more:

And everywhere the broad and bounteous Earth

Should bear a double growth of those rare souls,

Poets, whose thoughts enrich the blood of the world.'

     She ended here, and beckoned us: the rest

Parted; and, glowing full-faced welcome, she

Began to address us, and was moving on

In gratulation, till as when a boat

Tacks, and the slackened sail flaps, all her voice

Faltering and fluttering in her throat, she cried

'My brother!' 'Well, my sister.' 'O,' she said,

'What do you here? and in this dress? and these?

Why who are these? a wolf within the fold!

A pack of wolves! the Lord be gracious to me!

A plot, a plot, a plot to ruin all!'

'No plot, no plot,' he answered. 'Wretched boy,

How saw you not the inscription on the gate,

LET NO MAN ENTER IN ON PAIN OF DEATH?'

'And if I had,' he answered, 'who could think

The softer Adams of your Academe,

O sister, Sirens though they be, were such

As chanted on the blanching bones of men?'

'But you will find it otherwise' she said.

'You jest: ill jesting with edge-tools! my vow

Binds me to speak, and O that iron will,

That axelike edge unturnable, our Head,

The Princess.' 'Well then, Psyche, take my life,

And nail me like a weasel on a grange

For warning: bury me beside the gate,

And cut this epitaph above my bones;

Here lies a brother by a sister slain,

All for the common good of womankind.'

'Let me die too,' said Cyril, 'having seen

And heard the Lady Psyche.'

                                             I struck in:

'Albeit so masked, Madam, I love the truth;

Receive it; and in me behold the Prince

Your countryman, affianced years ago

To the Lady Ida: here, for here she was,

And thus (what other way was left) I came.'

'O Sir, O Prince, I have no country; none;

If any, this; but none. Whate'er I was

Disrooted, what I am is grafted here.

Affianced, Sir? love-whispers may not breathe

Within this vestal limit, and how should I,

Who am not mine, say, live: the thunderbolt

Hangs silent; but prepare: I speak; it falls.'

'Yet pause,' I said: 'for that inscription there,

I think no more of deadly lurks therein,

Than in a clapper clapping in a garth,

To scare the fowl from fruit: if more there be,

If more and acted on, what follows? war;

Your own work marred: for this your Academe,

Whichever side be Victor, in the halloo

Will topple to the trumpet down, and pass

With all fair theories only made to gild

A stormless summer.' 'Let the Princess judge

Of that' she said: 'farewell, Sir--and to you.

I shudder at the sequel, but I go.'

     'Are you that Lady Psyche,' I rejoined,

'The fifth in line from that old Florian,

Yet hangs his portrait in my father's hall

(The gaunt old Baron with his beetle brow

Sun-shaded in the heat of dusty fights)

As he bestrode my Grandsire, when he fell,

And all else fled? we point to it, and we say,

The loyal warmth of Florian is not cold,

But branches current yet in kindred veins.'

'Are you that Psyche,' Florian added; 'she

With whom I sang about the morning hills,

Flung ball, flew kite, and raced the purple fly,

And snared the squirrel of the glen? are you

That Psyche, wont to bind my throbbing brow,

To smoothe my pillow, mix the foaming draught

Of fever, tell me pleasant tales, and read

My sickness down to happy dreams? are you

That brother-sister Psyche, both in one?

You were that Psyche, but what are you now?'

'You are that Psyche,' said Cyril, 'for whom

I would be that for ever which I seem,

Woman, if I might sit beside your feet,

And glean your scattered sapience.'

                                                        Then once more,

'Are you that Lady Psyche,' I began,

'That on her bridal morn before she past

From all her old companions, when the kind

Kissed her pale cheek, declared that ancient ties

Would still be dear beyond the southern hills;

That were there any of our people there

In want or peril, there was one to hear

And help them? look! for such are these and I.'

'Are you that Psyche,' Florian asked, 'to whom,

In gentler days, your arrow-wounded fawn

Came flying while you sat beside the well?

The creature laid his muzzle on your lap,

And sobbed, and you sobbed with it, and the blood

Was sprinkled on your kirtle, and you wept.

That was fawn's blood, not brother's, yet you wept.

O by the bright head of my little niece,

You were that Psyche, and what are you now?'

'You are that Psyche,' Cyril said again,

'The mother of the sweetest little maid,

That ever crowed for kisses.'

                                              'Out upon it!'

She answered, 'peace! and why should I not play

The Spartan Mother with emotion, be

The Lucius Junius Brutus of my kind?

Him you call great: he for the common weal,

The fading politics of mortal Rome,

As I might slay this child, if good need were,

Slew both his sons: and I, shall I, on whom

The secular emancipation turns

Of half this world, be swerved from right to save

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; yet--

Hear my conditions: promise (otherwise

You perish) as you came, to slip away

Today, tomorrow, 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:

'I knew you at the first: though you have grown

You scarce have altered: I am sad and glad

To see you, Florian. I give thee to death

My brother! it was duty spoke, not I.

My needful seeming harshness, pardon it.

Our mother, is she well?'

                                         With that she kissed

His forehead, then, a moment after, clung

About him, and betwixt them blossomed 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,

'I brought a message here from Lady Blanche.'

Back started she, and turning round we saw

The Lady Blanche's daughter where she stood,

Melissa, with her hand upon the lock,

A rosy blonde, and in a college gown,

That clad her like an April daffodilly

(Her mother's colour) with her lips apart,

And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes,

As bottom agates seen to wave and float

In crystal currents of clear morning seas.

     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:

But, dearest Lady, pray you fear me not,

Nor think I bear that heart within my breast,

To give three gallant gentlemen to death.'

'I trust you,' said the other, 'for we two

Were always friends, none closer, elm and vine:

But yet your mother's jealous temperament--

Let not your prudence, dearest, drowse, or prove

The Danaïd of a leaky vase, for fear

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

The new light up, and culminate in peace,

For Solomon may come to Sheba yet.'

Said Cyril, 'Madam, he the wisest man

Feasted the woman wisest then, in halls

Of Lebanonian cedar: nor should you

(Though, Madam, you should answer, we would ask)

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 answered 'Go: we have been too long

Together: keep your hoods about the face;

They do so that affect abstraction here.

Speak little; mix not with the rest; and hold

Your promise: all, I trust, may yet be well.'

     We turned to go, but Cyril took the child,

And held her round the knees against his waist,

And blew the swollen cheek of a trumpeter,

While Psyche watched them, smiling, and the child

Pushed her flat hand against his face and laughed;

And thus our conference closed.

                                                   And then we strolled

For half the day through stately theatres

Benched crescent-wise. In each we sat, we heard

The grave Professor. On the lecture slate

The circle rounded under female hands

With flawless demonstration: followed then

A classic lecture, rich in sentiment,

With scraps of thunderous Epic lilted out

By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies

And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long

That on the stretched forefinger of all Time

Sparkle for ever: then we dipt in all

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!' answered Florian; 'have you learnt

No more from Psyche's lecture, you that talked

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?

And learnt? I learnt more from her in a flash,

Than in my brainpan were an empty hull,

And every Muse tumbled a science in.

A thousand hearts lie fallow in these halls,

And round these halls a thousand baby loves

Fly twanging headless arrows at the hearts,

Whence follows many a vacant pang; but O

With me, Sir, entered in the bigger boy,

The Head of all the golden-shafted firm,

The long-limbed lad that had a Psyche too;

He cleft me through the stomacher; and now

What think you of it, Florian? do I chase

The substance or the shadow? will it hold?

I have no sorcerer's malison on me,

No ghostly hauntings like his Highness. I

Flatter myself that always everywhere

I know the substance when I see it. Well,

Are castles shadows? Three of them? Is she

The sweet proprietress a shadow? If not,

Shall those three castles patch my tattered coat?

For dear are those three castles to my wants,

And dear is sister Psyche to my heart,

And two dear things are one of double worth,

And much I might have said, but that my zone

Unmanned me: then the Doctors! O to hear

The Doctors! O to watch the thirsty plants

Imbibing! once or twice I thought to roar,

To break my chain, to shake my mane: but thou,

Modulate me, Soul of mincing mimicry!

Make liquid treble of that bassoon, my throat;

Abase those eyes that ever loved to meet

Star-sisters answering under crescent brows;

Abate the stride, which speaks of man, and loose

A flying charm of blushes o'er this cheek,

Where they like swallows coming out of time

Will wonder why they came: but hark the bell

For dinner, let us go!'

                                    And in we streamed

Among the columns, pacing staid and still

By twos and threes, till all from end to end

With beauties every shade of brown and fair

In colours gayer than the morning mist,

The long hall glittered like a bed of flowers.

How might a man not wander from his wits

Pierced through with eyes, but that I kept mine own

Intent on her, who rapt in glorious dreams,

The second-sight of some Astræan age,

Sat compassed with professors: they, the while,

Discussed a doubt and tost it to and fro:

A clamour thickened, mixt with inmost terms

Of art and science: Lady Blanche alone

Of faded form and haughtiest lineaments,

With all her autumn tresses falsely brown,

Shot sidelong daggers at us, a tiger-cat

In act to spring.

                          At last a solemn grace

Concluded, and we sought the gardens: there

One walked reciting by herself, and one

In this hand held a volume as to read,

And smoothed a petted peacock down with that:

Some to a low song oared a shallop by,

Or under arches of the marble bridge

Hung, shadowed from the heat: some hid and sought

In the orange thickets: others tost a ball

Above the fountain-jets, and back again

With laughter: others lay about the lawns,

Of the older sort, and murmured that their May

Was passing: what was learning unto them?

They wished to marry; they could rule a house;

Men hated learned women: but we three

Sat muffled like the Fates; and often came

Melissa hitting all we saw with shafts

Of gentle satire, kin to charity,

That harmed not: then day droopt; the chapel bells

Called us: we left the walks; we mixt with those

Six hundred maidens clad in purest white,

Before two streams of light from wall to wall,

While the great organ almost burst his pipes,

Groaning for power, and rolling through the court

A long melodious thunder to the sound

Of solemn psalms, and silver litanies,

The work of Ida, to call down from Heaven

A blessing on her labours for the world.

     Sweet and low, sweet and low,

          Wind of the western sea,

     Low, low, breathe and blow,

          Wind of the western sea!

     Over the rolling waters go,

     Come from the dying moon, and blow,

          Blow him again to me;

     While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.

     Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,

          Father will come to thee soon;

     Rest, rest, on mother's breast,

          Father will come to thee soon;

     Father will come to his babe in the nest,

     Silver sails all out of the west

          Under the silver moon:

     Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.

            On to Part III

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