From him to me? we give you, being strange,
A license speak, and let the topic die."

I stammer'd that I knew him- could have

wish'd

190

"Our king expects-was there no precontract? There is no truer-hearted—ah, you seem

All he prefigured, and he could not see

The bird of passage flying south but lonp'd

To follow surely, if your Highness keep

195

Your purport, you will shock him ev'n to death,
Or baser courses, children of despair."

"Poor boy," she said, " can he not read-no books?

Quoit, tennis, ball-no games? nor deals in that
Which men delight in, martial exercise?
To nurse a blind ideal like a girl,

200

Methinks he seems no better than a girl;

As girls were once, as we ourselves have been :

We had our dreams; perhaps he mixt with them:
We touch on our dead self, nor shun to do it,
Being other since we learnt our meaning here,
To lift the woman's fall'n divinity
Upon an even pedestal with man.'

She paused, and added with a haughtier smile
"And as to precontracts, we move, my friend,
At no man's beck, but know ourselves and thee,
O Vashti, noble Vashti! Summon'd out
She kept her state, and left the drunken king
To brawl at Shushan underneath the palms.'

205

210

"Alas your Highness breathes full East," I said, 215 "On that which leans to you. I know the Prince,

I prize his truth: and then how vast a work

To assail this gray preeminence of man!

You grant me license; might I use it? think;

200. 1847-48-50. exercises.

203. 1872 and onward. ourself.

207. 1847-48. To uplift.

211. 1877 and onward. ourself.

212. Or Vashi; cf. Esther i. 11, 12, and passim.

may

Ere half be done perchance your life fail;
Then comes the feebler heiress of your plan,
And takes and ruins all; and thus your pains
May only make that footprint upon sand
Which old-recurring waves of prejudice
Resmooth to nothing: might I dread that you,
With only Fame for spouse and your great deeds
For issue, yet may live in vain, and miss,
Meanwhile, what every woman counts her due,
Love, children, happiness?"

And she exclaim'd,

220

225

"Peace, you young savage of the Northern wild! 230 What! tho' your Prince's love were like a God's,

Have we not made ourself the sacrifice?

You are bold indeed: we are not talk'd to thus:
Yet will we say for children, would they grew

Like field-flowers everywhere! we like them well: 235
But children die; and let me tell you, girl,
Howe'er you babble, great deeds cannot die:
They with the sun and moon renew their light
For ever, blessing those that look on them.

Children

hearts,

that men may pluck them from our

Kill us with pity, break us with ourselves—
O-children-there is nothing upon earth
More miserable than she that has a son

240

And sees him err: nor would we work for fame;
Tho' she perhaps might reap the applause of Great, 245
Who learns the one POU STO whence after-hands

May move the world, tho' she herself effect
But little wherefore up and act, nor shrink
For fear our solid aim be dissipated

232. 1847-48. ourselves.

...

237. For the sentiment, cf. Plato, Symposium, p. 208, "Men whose bodies only are creative betake themselves to women and beget children; their offspring, as they hope, will preserve their memory;. but creative souls conceive that which is proper for the soul to conceive or retain ;" and Bacon (Discourse in the Praise of his Sovereign), "Let them leave children that leave no other memory in their times.'

"

246. The well-known remark of Archimedes, "Give me a place to stand on (literally, where I may stand), and I will move the world.' The anecdote is related by Tzetzes, ἔλεγε δὲ καὶ δωριστὶ φωνῇ Συρακουσίᾳι Πᾶ στῶ, καὶ χαριστίωνι τὰν γὰν zow Trav (And he said in Doric, in the Syracusan dialect, where may I stand, and with my lever I will move the world).

By frail successors.

Would, indeed, we had been,

In lieu of many mortal flies, a race

250

Of giants living, each, a thousand years,

That we might see our own work out, and watch
The sandy footprint harden into stone."

I answer'd nothing, doubtful in myself

255

If that strange Poet-princess with her grand
Imaginations might at all be won.

And she broke out interpreting my thoughts:

"No doubt we seem a kind of monster to you;
We are used to that: for women, up till this
Cramp'd under worse than South-sea-isle taboo,
Dwarfs of the gynæceum, fail so far

260

In high desire, they know not, cannot guess
How much their welfare is a passion to us.

If we could give them surer, quicker proof-
Oh if our end were less achievable

265

By slow approaches, than by single act

Of immolation, any phase of death,

We were as prompt to spring against the pikes,
Or down the fiery gulf as talk of it,

270

To compass our dear sister's liberties."

She bow'd as if to veil a noble tear;

And up we came to where the river sloped

To plunge in cataract, shattering on black blocks
A breadth of thunder. O'er it shook the woods,
And danced the colour, and, below, stuck out

275

The bones of some vast bulk that lived and roar'd
Before man was. She gazed awhile and said,
"As these rude bones to us, are we to her
That will be." "Dare we dream of that," I ask'd,

280

"Which wrought us, as the workman and his work, That practice betters?" "How," she cried, "you love The metaphysics! read and earn our prize,

250. 1847-48-50. Of frail.

256, 257. 1847-48-50. If that strange maiden could at all be won.

261. A Polynesian word signifying restraint, particularly of a religious kind; it has another form, tapu.

262. 1847-48, spelt "gynecæum." The women's apartments in a Greek house (rò yuvasion).

269, 270. As Arnold von Winkelried did at the battle of Sempach in 1388, as Marcus Curtius did in the forum of Rome in B.C. 362.

271. So till 1860; afterwards, sisters'.

A golden broach: beneath an emerald plane
Sits Diotima, teaching him that died

285

Of hemlock; our device; wrought to the life;
She rapt upon her subject, he on her:

For there are schools for all." "And yet" I said
"Methinks I have not found among them all
One anatomic." "Nay, we thought of that,"
She answer'd, "but it pleased us not: in truth
We shudder but to dream our maids should ape
Those monstrous males that carve the living hound,
And cram him with the fragments of the grave,
Or in the dark dissolving human heart,
And holy secrets of this microcosm,

290

295

Dabbling a shameless hand with shameful jest,

Encarnalize their spirits: yet we know

Knowledge is knowledge, and this matter hangs :
Howbeit ourself, foreseeing casualty,

300

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;

305

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,

310

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 we will work, and mould
The woman to the fuller day."

284. 1877 and onward. brooch.

285. A priestess of Mantineia, who is said to have been the instructress of Socrates. Her opinions on the origin, nature, and objects of life are introduced in Plato's Symposium, pp. 201-12.

294. A reference to a horrible report that dogs kept for the purpose of dissection sometimes fed on the bodies which had already been dissected. See Hogarth's ghastly picture of a dissecting-room, where a dog is represented as doing what is here described.

300 and 303. 1847-48. ourselves.

313. This fine expression is Wordsworth's (Yew-trees):

Death the Skeleton

And Time the Shadow.

314. So all the earlier editions. 1875. will we.

She spake

I said

315

320

"Yea,"

With kindled eyes: we rode a league beyond,
And, o'er a bridge of pinewood crossing, came
On flowery levels underneath the crag,
Full of all beauty.
"O how sweet
(For I was half-oblivious of my mask)
"To linger here with one that loved us."
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 vapour 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 maiden-cheek,
The woman-conqueror; woman-conquer'd there
The bearded Victor of ten thousand hymns,

325

330

335

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

340

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. 316-17. 1847-48. rode a little higher

To cross the flood by a narrow bridge, and came. 319. 1847. and "O how sweet" etc.

345

324. The allusion, as Mr. Wallace points out, seems to be to Pindar (Olymp. ii. 123-36), the "towers built to the Sun" being the tower of Chronos, but it is so faint and vague as to be scarcely discernible.

331. Corinna, the famous Boeotian poetess, and the most distinguished of Greek poetesses, who is said to have instructed Pindar, "the bearded Victor of ten thousand hymns," and to have beaten him afterwards in competition, according to Ælian (Var. Hist. xiii. 25), five times; according to Pausanias (ix. 22), once. 337. 1847-48. With Psyche, Florian with the other, and I.

343-45. For these terms, see any of the popular handbooks on geology.