VII

So was their sanctuary violated,
So their fair college turn'd to hospital;
At first with all confusion: by and by
Sweet order lived again with other laws :

A kindlier influence reign'd; and everywhere

Low voices with the ministering hand

Hung round the sick: the maidens came, they talk'd,
They sang, they read: till she not fair, began

5

To gather light, and she that was, became
Her former beauty treble; and to and fro

10

With books, with flowers, with Angel offices,
Like creatures native unto gracious act,
And in their own clear element, they moved.

But sadness on the soul of Ida fell,
And hatred of her weakness, blent with shame.
Old studies fail'd; seldom she spoke, but oft
Clomb to the roofs, and gazed alone for hours
On that disastrous leaguer, swarms of men
Darkening her female field: void was her use,
And she as one that climbs a peak to gaze
O'er land and main, and sees a great black cloud

VII

3. 1875, by and by; 1880, by and bye; subsequently, by and by.
20 seqq. With this cf. Iliad, iv. 275:-

ὡς δ ̓ ὅτ' ἀπὸ σκοπιῆς εἶδεν νέφος αιπόλος ἀνήρ,
ἐρχόμενον κατὰ πόντον ὑπὸ Ζεφύροιο ζωῆς·
τῷ δὲ τ', ἄνευθεν ἐόντι, μελάντερον, ήΰτε πίσσα,
φαίνετ' ἰὸν κατὰ πόντον, ἄγει δέ τε λαίλαπα πολλήν

15

20

(As when a goatherd from some hill peak sees a cloud coming across the deep with the blast of the west wind behind it; and to him, being as he is afar, it seems blacker even as pitch as it goes along the sea, and it brings a great whirlwind with it). Virgil also imitates it, Eneid, xii. 451-55. Cf., too, Lucretius, vi. 256 seqq. But Tennyson said the simile in the text was not suggested to him by Homer, but by "a coming storm seen from the top of Snowdon," which adds greatly to the interest of the parallel.

Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night,
Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore,
And suck the blinding splendour from the sand,
And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn
Expunge the world: so fared she gazing there;
So blacken'd all her world in secret, blank

And waste it seem'd and vain; till down she came,
And found fair peace once more among the sick.

25

And twilight dawn'd; and morn by morn the lark 30
Shot up and shrill'd in flickering gyres, but I
Lay silent in the muffled cage of life:

And twilight gloom'd; and broader-grown the bowers
Drew the great night into themselves, and Heaven,
Star after star, arose and fell; but I,

Deeper than those weird doubts could reach me, lay
Quite sunder'd from the moving Universe,
Nor knew what eye was on me, nor the hand

That nursed me, more than infants in their sleep.

35

But Psyche tended Florian: with her oft,

40

Melissa came; for Blanche had gone, but left
Her child among us, willing she should keep
Court-favour: here and there the small bright head,

A light of healing, glanced about the couch,
Or thro' the parted silks the tender face

45

Peep'd, shining in upon the wounded man

With blush and smile, a medicine in themselves

To wile the length from languorous hours, and draw

The sting from pain; nor seem'd it strange that soon

He rose up whole, and those fair charities

50

Join'd at her side; nor stranger seem'd that hearts

So gentle, so employ'd, should close in love,
Than when two dewdrops on the petal shake
To the same sweet air, and tremble deeper down,
And slip at once all-fragrant into one.

33. 1847-48. broader grown (no hyphen).

55

34. Commas after "Heaven and "star" inserted in 1850, and in the two earlier editions only a comma after "fell."

36. Added in 1851.

37. 1847-48-50. Lay sunder'd from the moving Universe.

40. The comma after "oft" was first inserted in 1860; it is dropped in 1885,

but subsequently reappears.

48. Comma was first inserted in 1853. 54. Comma after "air" added in 1851.

Less prosperously the second suit obtain'd
At first with Psyche. Not tho' Blanche had sworn
That after that dark night among the fields,

She needs must wed him for her own good name;
Not tho' he built upon the babe restored;
Nor tho' she liked him, yielded she, but fear'd
To incense the Head once more; till on a day
When Cyril pleaded, Ida came behind
Seen but of Psyche: on her foot she hung
A moment, and she heard, at which her face
A little flush'd, and she past on; but each
Assumed from thence a half-consent involved
In stillness, plighted troth, and were at peace.

60

65

Nor only these: Love in the sacred halls

Held carnival at will, and flying struck

70

With showers of random sweet on maid and man.

Nor did her father cease to press my claim,

Nor did mine own now reconciled; nor yet

Did those twin brothers, risen again and whole;
Nor Arac, satiate with his victory.

75

But I lay still, and with me oft she sat :

Then came a change; for sometimes I would catch
Her hand in wild delirium, gripe it hard,

And fling it like a viper off, and shriek

"You are not Ida;" clasp it once again,

80

And call her Ida, tho' I knew her not,
And call her sweet, as if in irony,

And call her hard and cold which seem'd a truth:

And still she fear'd that I should lose my mind,
And often she believed that I should die:

85

Till out of long frustration of her care,

And pensive tendance in the all-weary noons,
And watches in the dead, the dark, when clocks
Throbb'd thunder thro' the palace floors, or call'd
On flying Time from all their silver tongues—

The comma after line 58 disappeared after 1875.

60. 1847-48. Spelt "though" in this line

Not though he built on what she said of the child.

64. 1847. Full stop after "Psyche."

65, 66. Commas after "moment" and "flush'd" were added in 1853.. Comma after line 80 added in 1853.

And out of memories of her kindlier days,
And sidelong glances at my father's grief,
And at the happy lovers heart in heart—
And out of hauntings of my spoken love,
And lonely listenings to my mutter'd dream,
And often feeling of the helpless hands,
And wordless broodings on the wasted cheek—
From all a closer interest flourish'd up,
Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these,
Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears
By some cold morning glacier; frail at first
And feeble, all unconscious of itself,
But such as gather'd colour day by day.

95

100

Last I woke sane, but well-nigh close to death
For weakness: it was evening: silent light

105

Slept on the painted walls, wherein were wrought

Two grand designs; for on one side arose
The women up in wild revolt, and storm'd

At the Oppian law. Titanic shapes, they cramm'd
The forum, and half-crush'd among the rest

110

A dwarflike Cato cower'd. On the other side
Hortensia spoke against the tax; behind,
A train of dames: by axe and eagle sat,
With all their foreheads drawn in Roman scowls,
And half the wolf's-milk curdled in their veins,
The fierce triumvirs; and before them paused
Hortensia pleading: angry was her face.

98. Comma added in 1850.

115

107 seqq. In B.C. 213, in the middle of the second Punic War, Caius Oppius carried a law to curtail the expenses and luxuries of the Roman women, enacting that no woman should have more than an ounce of gold, nor wear a dress of different colours, nor ride in a carriage in the city nor in any town, or within a mile of it, unless on account of public sacrifices. In B.C. 195 the women, who had found a champion in L. Valerius, Tribune of the Plebs, rose in rebellion against it, and in spite of the opposition of the elder Cato, forced its repeal. See for a full and graphic account of this, Livy, xxxiv. 1-8. The tax Hortensia, the daughter of Quintus Hortensius, opposed was levied on wealthy Roman matrons, after the assassination of Julius Cæsar, to defray the expenses of the war against Brutus and Cassius, and she pleaded before the triumvirs, Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus, procuring its rejection. See Valerius Maximus, viii. 3.

III. 1847-48. little. 1850. dwarflike.

In and after 1872. dwarf-like.

I saw the forms: I knew not where I was:
They did but look like hollow shows; nor more
Sweet Ida: palm to palm she sat: the dew
Dwelt in her eyes, and softer all her shape
And rounder seem'd: I moved: I sigh'd: a touch
Came round my wrist, and tears upon my hand:
Then all for languor and self-pity ran

Mine down my face, and with what life I had,
And like a flower that cannot all unfold,
So drench'd it is with tempest, to the sun,
Yet, as it may, turns toward him, I on her
Fixt my faint eyes, and utter'd whisperingly:

120

125

"If you be, what I think you, some sweet dream, 130 I would but ask you to fulfil yourself:

But if you be that Ida whom I knew,

I ask you nothing: only, if a dream,

Sweet dream, be perfect. I shall die to-night.
Stoop down and seem to kiss me ere I die.'

I could no more, but lay like one in trance,
That hears his burial talk'd of by his friends,

135

And cannot speak, nor move, nor make one sign,

But lies and dreads his doom. She turn'd; she paused;
She stoop'd; and out of languor leapt a cry;

140

Leapt fiery Passion from the brinks of death;

And I believed that in the living world
My spirit closed with Ida's at the lips;
Till back I fell, and from mine arms she rose
Glowing all over noble shame; and all

After 118 in 1847-48-50 appears this line :

Sad1 phantoms conjured out of circumstance.

119. 1847-48-50. Ghosts of the fading brain, they seem'd; nor more.

1851-53. seem as hollow shows.

122. 1847-8-50-1-3. And rounder show'd.

140. 1847-48:

She stoop'd; and with a great shock of the heart
Our mouths met: out of languor leapt a cry,

Crown'd2 Passion from the brinks of death, and up
Along the shuddering senses struck the soul,
And closed on fire with Ida's at the lips.

145

The present reading dates from 1850, except that line 142 was added in 1851.