Nor willing men should come among us, learnt,

For many weary moons before we came,

This craft of healing. Were you sick, ourself

Would tend upon you. To your question now,

Which touches on the workman and his work.

Let there be light and there was light: 'tis so:

For was, and is, and will be, are but is;

And all creation is one act at once, The birth of light: but we that are not all,

As parts, can see but parts, now this, now that,

And live, perforce, from thought to thought, and make

One act a phantom of succession: thus

Our weakness somehow shapes the shadow, Time;

But in the shadow will we work, and mould

The woman to the fuller day."

She spake With kindled eyes: we rode a league beyond,

And, o'er a bridge of pinewood cross

ing, came

On flowery levels underneath the crag,
Full of all beauty. "O how sweet
I said

(For I was half-oblivious of my mask) "To linger here with one that loved us." "Yea,"

She answer'd, "or with fair philosophies

That lift the fancy; for indeed these fields

Are lovely, lovelier not the Elysian lawns,

Where paced the Demigods of old, and saw

The soft white vapor streak the crowned towers

Built to the Sun:" then, turning to her maids,

"Pitch our pavilion here upon the sward;

Lay out the viands." At the word, they raised

A tent of satin, elaborately wrought With fair Corinna's triumph; here she stood,

Engirt with many a florid maidencheek,

The woman conqueror; woman-conquer'd there

The bearded Victor of ten-thousand hymns,

And all the men mourn'd at his side: but we

Set forth to climb; then, climbing, Cyril kept

With Psyche, with Melissa Florian, I With mine affianced. Many a little hand

Glanced like a touch of sunshine on the rocks,

Many a light foot shone like a jewel

set

In the dark crag: and then we turn'd, we wound

About the cliffs, the copses, out and in, Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names

Of shale and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff,

Amygdaloid and trachyte, till the Sun Grew broader toward his death and fell, and all

The rosy heights came out above the lawns.

IV.

The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,

And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying
dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,

That sinks with all we love below the verge ; So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

"Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns

The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering

square;

So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

"Dear as remember'd kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more."

She ended with such passion that the tear,

She sang of, shook and fell, an erring pearl

Lost in her bosom: but with some disdain

Answer'd the Princess, "If indeed there haunt

About the moulder'd lodges of the Past So sweet a voice and vague, fatal to

men,

Well needs it we should cram our ears with wool

And so pace by but thine are fancies hatch'd

In silken-folded idleness; nor is it Wiser to weep a true occasion lost, But trim our sails, and let old bygones be,

While down the streams that float us each and all

To the issue, goes, like glittering bergs of ice,

Throne after throne, and molten on the waste

Becomes a cloud: for all things serve their time

Toward that great year of equal mights and rights,

Nor would I fight with iron laws, in the end

Found golden: let the past be past; let be

Their cancell❜d Babels: tho' the rough kex break

The starr'd mosaic, and the beardblown goat

Hang on the shaft, and the wild figtree split

Their monstrous idols, care not while we hear

A trumpet in the distance pealing news Of better, and Hope, a poising eagle, burns

Above the unrisen morrow:" then to me;

"Know you no song of your own land," she said,

"Not such as moans about the retrospect,

But deals with the other distance and the hues

Of promise; not a death's-head at the wine."

Then I remember'd one myself had made,

What time I watch'd the swallow winging south

From mine own land, part made long since, and part

Now while I sang, and maidenlike as far

As I could ape their treble, did I sing.

"O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South, Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves, And tell her, tell her, what I tell to thee.

"O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each,

That bright and fierce and fickle is the South, And dark and true and tender is the North.

"O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light

Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill,
And cheep and twitter twenty million loves.

"O were I thou that she might take me in, And lay me on her bosom, and her heart Would rock the snowy cradle till I died.

"Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love,

Delaying as the tender ash delays

To clothe herself, when all the woods are green?

"O tell her, Swallow, that thy brood is flown:

Say to her, I do but wanton in the South, But in the North long since my nest is made.

"O tell her, brief is life but love is long, And brief the sun of summer in the North, And brief the moon of beauty in the South.

"OSwallow, flying from the golden woods, Fly to her, and pipe and woo her, and maks her mine,

And tell her, tell her, that I follow thee."

I ceased, and all the ladies, each at each,

Like the Ithacensian suitors in old time,

Stared with great eyes, and laugh'd with alien lips,

And knew not what they meant; for still my voice

Rang false but smiling "Not for thee," she said,

"O Bulbul, any rose of Gulistan Shall burst her veil: marsh-divers, rather, maid,

Shall croak thee sister, or the meadowcrake

Grate her harsh kindred in the grass: and this

A mere love-poem! O for such, my friend,

We hold them slight: they mind us of the time

When we made bricks in Egypt. Knaves are men,

That lute and flute fantastic tenderness,

And dress the victim to the offering up. And paint the gates of Hell with Paradise,

And play the slave to gain the tyranny. Poor soul! I had a maid of honor once; She wept her true eyes blind for such

Till all men grew to rate us at our worth,

Not vassals to be beat, nor pretty babes To be dandled, no, but living wills, and sphered

Whole in ourselves and owed to none. Enough!

But now to leaven play with profit, you,

Know you no song, the true growth of your soil,

That gives the manners of your coun

try-women?

She spoke and turn'd her sumptuous head with eyes

Of shining expectation fixt on mine. Then while I dragg'd my brains for such a song,

Cyril, with whom the bell-mouth'd glass had wrought,

Or master'd by the sense of sport, be

gan

To troll a careless, careless taverncatch

I heard them passing from me: hoof by hoof,

And every hoof a knell to my desires, Clang'd on the bridge; and then another shriek,

"The Head, the Head, the Princess, O the Head!"

For blind with rage she miss'd the plank, and roll'd

In the river. Out I sprang from glow to gloom:

There whirl'd her white robe like a blossom'd branch

Rapt to the horrible fall: a glance I gave,

No more; but woman-vested as I was Plunged; and the flood drew; yet I caught her; then

Oaring one arm, and bearing in my left

The weight of all the hopes of half the world,

Strove to buffet to land in vain. A tree Was half-disrooted from his place and stoop'd

statues, Art

And Science, Caryatids lifted up

A weight of emblem, and betwixt were valves

Of open-work in which the hunter rued

His rash intrusion, manlike, but his brows

Had sprouted, and the branches thereupon

of all,

Melissa: trust me, Sir, I pitied her. She, question'd if she knew us men, at first

Was silent; closer prest, denied it

not:

And then, demanded if her mother knew,

Or Psyche, she affirm'd not, or denied:

the gates.

A little space was left between the horns,

Thro' which I clamber'd o'er at top with pain,

Dropt on the sward, and up the linden walks,

And, tost on thoughts that changed from hue to hue,

Now poring on the glowworm, now the star,

I paced the terrace, till the Bear had wheel'd

Thro' a great arc his seven slow suns.

A step

Of lightest echo, then a loftier form Than female, moving thro' the uncertain gloom,

Disturb'd me with the doubt "if this were she,"

But it was Florian.

iar with her,

Easily gather'd either guilt. She

sent

For Psyche, but she was not there; she call'd

For Psyche's child to cast it from the doors;

She sent for Blanche to accuse her face to face;

And I slipt out: but whither will you now?

And where are Psyche, Cyril? both are fled:

What, if together? that were not so well.

Would rather we had never come! I dread

His wildness, and the chances of the dark."

'They seek us: out so late is out of rules.

Moreover seize the strangers' is the cry.

How came you here?" I told him:

"I" said he,

"Last of the train, a moral leper, I, To whom none spake, half-sick at heart, return'd.

Arriving all confused among the rest With hooded brows I crept into the hall,

And, couch'd behind a Judith, underneath

The head of Holofernes peep'd and saw. Girl after girl was call'd to trial: each