And Cyril, one.

Yea, let me make my

dream

All that I would.

But that large-moulded man,

His visage all agrin as at a wake,

Made at me thro' the press, and, staggering back
With stroke on stroke the horse and horseman, came
As comes a pillar of electric cloud,

Flaying the roofs and sucking up the drains,

And shadowing down the champain till it strikes
On a wood, and takes, and breaks, and cracks, and
splits,

And twists the grain with such a roar that Earth
Reels, and the herdsmen cry; for everything
Gave way before him: only Florian, he

That loved me closer than his own right eye,
Thrust in between; but Arac rode him down:
And Cyril seeing it, push'd against the Prince,
With Psyche's colour round his helmet, tough,
Strong, supple, sinew-corded, apt at arms;
But tougher, heavier, stronger, he that smote
And threw him: last I spurr'd; I felt my veins
Stretch with fierce heat; a moment hand to hand,
And sword to sword, and horse to horse we hung,
Till I struck out and shouted; the blade glanced;
I did but shear a feather, and dream and truth
Flow'd from me; darkness closed me; and I fell.

508, 509. 1847-48-50. And Cyril one; but that large-moulded man.
510. Added in 1850.

514. 1847-48. Flaying off the roofs.

515. 1884. champaign.

517. 1847-48. that the Earth.

525. 1847-48. 'suppler" for "heavier."

530. 1847-48-50. and life and love.

510

515

520

525

530

Home they brought her warrior dead:
She nor swoon'd, nor utter'd cry:
All her maidens, watching, said,

"She must weep or she will die."

Then they praised him, soft and low,
Call'd him worthy to be loved,
Truest friend and noblest foe;

Yet she neither spoke nor moved.

Stole a maiden from her place,
Lightly to the warrior stept,
Took the face-cloth from the face;
Yet she neither moved nor wept.

Rose a nurse of ninety years,

Set his child upon her knee

Like summer tempest came her tears-
"Sweet my child, I live for thee."

The song was added in 1850, and has not been altered.

With the incident embodied in the song, cf. Thorpe's Edda of Sæmund the Learned, pp. 89-91, and the following passage in Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel:

O'er her warrior's bloody bier

The ladye dropp'd nor flower nor tear,
Until amid her sorrowing clan

Her son lisp'd from the nurse's knee.

Then fast the mother's tears did seek

To dew the infant's kindling cheek.

There is a variant of this song in the Selections from Tennyson's poems, printed by Moxon in 1865, beginning, "Home they brought him, slain with spears."

VI

My dream had never died or lived again.
As in some mystic middle state I lay;
Seeing I saw not, hearing not I heard:
Tho', if I saw not, yet they told me all
So often that I speak as having seen.

For so it seem'd, or so they said to me,

5

That all things grew more tragic and more strange;

That when our side was vanquish'd and my cause
For ever lost, there went up a great cry,

The Prince is slain. My father heard and ran
In on the lists, and there unlaced my casque

10

And grovell'd on my body, and after him
Came Psyche, sorrowing for Aglaïa.

But high upon the palace Ida stood

With Psyche's babe in arm: there on the roofs
Like that great dame of Lapidoth she sang.

15

"Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: the seed,
The little seed they laugh'd at in the dark,
Has risen and cleft the soil, and grown a bulk
Of spanless girth, that lays on every side
A thousand arms and rushes to the Sun.

20

VI

1-3. Added in 1851.

4. 1847-48-50. What follow'd, tho' I saw not, yet I heard. 6, 7. Added in 1851.

The first three editions therefore start as follows:

What follow'd, tho' I saw not, yet I heard

So often that I speak as having seen.

For when our side was vanquished, etc.

15. The reference is to Deborah, the wife of Lapidoth, according to some, though, according to others, belonging to a place named Lapidoth; the text judiciously leaves the matter ambiguous. For the pæan referred to, see Judges iv., v. After 1875 the song generally printed in small type.

"Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: they came;
The leaves were wet with women's tears: they heard
A noise of songs they would not understand:
They mark'd it with the red cross to the fall,
And would have strown it, and are fall'n themselves.

"Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: they came,
The woodmen with their axes: lo the tree!
But we will make it faggots for the hearth,
And shape it plank and beam for roof and floor,
And boats and bridges for the use of men.

25

30

“Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: they struck;
With their own blows they hurt themselves, nor knew
There dwelt an iron nature in the grain:
The glittering axe was broken in their arms,
Their arms were shatter'd to the shoulder blade.

35

"Our enemies have fall'n, but this shall grow
A night of Summer from the heat, a breadth
Of Autumn, dropping fruits of power, and roll'd
With music in the growing breeze of Time,
The tops shall strike from star to star, the fangs
Shall move the stony bases of the world.

"And now, O maids, behold our sanctuary

Is violate, our laws broken: fear we not

To break them more in their behoof, whose arms
Champion'd our cause and won it with a day
Blanch'd in our annals, and perpetual feast,
When dames and heroines of the golden year
Shall strip a hundred hollows bare of Spring,
To rain an April of ovation round

40

45

50

Their statues, borne aloft, the three: but come,
We will be liberal, since our rights are won.
Let them not lie in the tents with coarse mankind,
Ill nurses; but descend, and proffer these
The brethren of our blood and cause, that there
Lie bruised and maim'd, the tender ministries
Of female hands and hospitality."

55

40. 1847-48. Eonian breeze.

47. An obscure and affected expression for marked with white chalk, as propitious days among the Romans were.

She spoke, and with the babe yet in her arms,
Descending, burst the great bronze valves, and led
A hundred maids in train across the Park.
Some cowl'd, and some bare-headed, on they came,
Their feet in flowers, her loveliest: by them went
The enamour'd air sighing, and on their curls
From the high tree the blossom wavering fell,
And over them the tremulous isles of light
Slided, they moving under shade: but Blanche
At distance follow'd: so they came: anon
Thro' open field into the lists they wound
Timorously; and as the leader of the herd
That holds a stately fretwork to the Sun,
And follow'd up by a hundred airy does,
Steps with a tender foot, light as on air,
The lovely, lordly creature floated on

To where her wounded brethren lay; there stay'd;
Knelt on one knee,-the child on one,

60

65

70

and prest

75

Their hands, and call'd them dear deliverers,

And happy warriors, and immortal names,

And said "You shall not lie in the tents but here,

And nursed by those for whom you fought, and served
With female hands and hospitality."

80

Then, whether moved by this, or was it chance,
She past my way. Up started from my side
The old lion, glaring with his whelpless eye,
Silent; but when she saw me lying stark,
Dishelm'd and mute, and motionlessly pale,
Cold ev'n to her, she sigh'd; and when she saw
The haggard father's face and reverend beard
Of grisly twine, all dabbled with the blood
Of his own son, shudder'd, a twitch of pain
Tortured her mouth, and o'er her forehead past
A shadow, and her hue changed, and she said:

85

90

"" spots

65, 66. The "tremulous isles of light" Tennyson himself explained as of sunshine coming through the leaves and seeming to slide from one to the other as the procession of girls moves under the shade." Mr. Wallace ppositely quotes Enone, 176-78 :—

and o'er her rounded form

Between the shadows of the vine-bunches
Floated the glowing sunlights, as she moved.

68. 1847-48. Thro' the open field.

91. 1847. and all her hue.