b'The Princess \n\nPRICE, 12 CENTS \n\nLittle \nClhssic \nSeries \n\n\n\n\nCHICAGO \n\nA.FLANAGAN COMPANY \n\n\n\n\nClass JEgL_5A^\'. \nBook _:^_ \n\n\n\nCopyright N". \n\n\n\nCOniRIGHT DEPOSnv \n\n\n\nTHE PRINCESS \n\nA MEDLEY \n\n\n\nBY \n\nALFRED LORD TENNYSON \n\n\n\nWITH NOTES BY \n\nROSE HENDERSON, Ph. B. \n\nINSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH, DRAKE UNIVERSITY \n\n\n\nA. FLANAGAN COMPANY \nCHICAGO \n\n\n\n\n\n\nNOTES AND ORIGINAL MATTER \nCOPYRIGHT 1910 \n\nBY \n\nLEWIS WORTHINGTON SMITH \n\n\n\ngCI.A256^50 \n\n\n\ni \nho \n\n\n\nTHE PRINCESS \n\nA MEDLEY \n\nPROLOGUE \n\nSir Walter Vivian all a summer\'s day \nGave his broad lawns until the set of sun \nUp to the people : thither flock\'d at noon \nHis tenants, wife and child, and thither half \nThe neighboring borough with their Institute \nOf which he was the patron. I was there \nFrom college, visiting the son, \xe2\x80\x94 the son \nA Walter too, \xe2\x80\x94 with others of our set, \nFive others : we were seven at Vivian-place. \n\n" The Princess." Since this poem was first published, in 1847, it has \nundergone various changes, the last of them having been made \nin the fifth edition, which appeared in 1853. \n\nA Medley. Justly so called because of the combination of sportive- \nness and seriousness in the poem, as well as the bringing to- \ngether of scenes and incidents characteristic of widely separated \ncenturies. \n\n1 Sir Walter Vivian. It is believed that Edmund Henry Lushing- \n\nton \xe2\x80\x94 to whom, in the second edition, the poem is dedicated, \nand who was a warm friend and great admirer of the poet \xe2\x80\x94 \nwas the original of Sir Walter Vivian. \n\n2 Lawns: open glades in the woods; grassy fields. Not the grass- \n\nplots which in America are known by the name. \n5 Institute: a society organized for the education as well as the \nentertainment of the working-people of the town. A festival \ngiven for the Maidstone Mechanics\' Institute in Mr. Lushing- \nton\'s park is here described. \n3 \n\n\n\n4 THE PRINCESS \n\nAnd me that morning Walter show\'d the house, \nGreek, set with busts : from vases in the hall \nFlowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their names, \nGrew side by side ; and on the pavement lay \nCarved stones of the Abbey-ruin in the park, \nHuge Ammonites, and the first bones of Time ; \nAnd on the tables every clime and age \nJumbled together ; celts and calumets, \nClaymore and snow-shoe, toys in lava, fans \nOf sandal, amber, ancient rosaries. \nLaborious orient ivory sphere in sphere. \nThe cursed Alalayan crease, and battle-clubs \nFrom the isles of palm : and higher on the walls, \nBetwixt the monstrous horns of elk and deer. \nHis own forefathers\' arms and armor hung. \n\n\n\n11 Greek, set with busts. That is, Greek in the style of its archi- \n\ntecture, with busts here and there around the walls. \n\n12 Their names. That is, their scientific names. \n\n14 Abbey-ruin. In many private parks in England the ruins of \n\nancient abbeys are still preserved. \n\n15 Antmonites: spiral-shaped fossil shells. The \xc2\xa3rst bones of Time: \n\nfossils of every sort. \n\n16 Every clime and age. That is, curios ancient and modern, from \n\nvarious countries. \n\n17 Celts: implements of prehistoric times, made of stone or metal \n\nand resembling an ax or a chisel. Calumets: Indian peace- \npipes. \n\n18 Claymore: a large two-handed, double-edged sword formerly used \n\nby the Scottish Highlanders. \n\n20 Laborious orient ivory, etc.: a series of ivory balls \xe2\x80\x94 one within \n\nthe other and sometimes beautifully carved \xe2\x80\x94 ingeniously fash- \nioned by oriental artisans. This line has been cited by more \nthan one critic as an example of Tennyson\'s faculty for choos- \ning words which by their very sound suggest the character of \nthat which they describe. \n\n21 Crease (also spelled creese and kris): a sort of dagger or sWord \n\nhaving a serpentine blade. \n\n\n\nPROLOGUE 5 \n\nAnd " this," he said, " was Hugh\'s at Agincourt ; \nAnd that was old Sir Ralph\'s at Ascalon : \nA good knight he ! we keep a chronicle \nWith all about him," \xe2\x80\x94 which he brought, and I \nDived in a hoard of tales that dealt with knights \nHalf-legend, half-historic, counts and kings ^* \n\nWho laid about them at their wills and died ; \nAnd mixt with these a lady, one that arm\'d \nHer own fair head, and sallying thro\' the gate. \nHad beat her foes with slaughter from her walls. \n\n" O miracle of women,\'* said the book, \n" O noble heart who, being strait-besieged \nBy this wild king to force her to his wish, \nNor bent, nor broke, nor shunn\'d a soldier\'s death, \nBut now when all was lost or seem\'d as lost \xe2\x80\x94 \nHer stature more than mortal in the burst *^ \n\nOf sunrise, her arm lifted, eyes on fire \xe2\x80\x94 \nBrake with a blast of trumpets from the gate, \nAnd, falling on them like a thunderbolt, \nShe trampled some beneath her horses\' heels. \nAnd some were whelm\'d with missiles of the wall, \nAnd some were push\'d with lances from the rock, \nAnd part were drown\'d within the whirling brook : \nO miracle of noble womanhood!" \n\n25 Agincourt: a village in France near which, in 1415, the English \n\nunder Henry V defeated the French forces. \n\n26 Ascalon: a city about forty miles from Jerusalem in the vicinity \n\nof which several battles between the Crusaders and the Saracens \ntook place. \n31 Laid about them at their wills. That is, fought whom it pleased \nthem to fight. \n\n35 Miracle of women: wonder among women. \n\n36 Strait-besieged: closely besieged. \n\n45 Whelm\'d: overwhelmed (of which it is not, however, an abbrevia- \ntion). \n\n\n\n6 THE PRINCESS \n\nSo sang the gallant glorious chronicle ; \nAnd, I all rapt in this, " Come out," he said, \'"\'\' \n\n" To the Abbey : there is Aunt Elizabeth \nAnd sister Lilia with the rest." We went \n(I kept the book and had my finger in it) \nDown thro\' the park : strange was the sight to me ; \nFor all the sloping pasture murmur\'d, sown \nWith happy faces and with holiday. \nThere moved the multitude, a thousand heads : \nThe patient leaders of their Institute \nTaught them with facts. One rear\'d a font of stone \nAnd drew, from butts of water on the slope, ^\'^ \n\nThe fountain of the moment, playing, now \nA twisted snake, and now a rain of pearls, \nOr steep-up spout whereon the gilded ball \nDanced like a wisp : and somewhat lower down \nA man with knobs and wires and vials fired \nA cannon ; Echo answer\'d in her sleep \nFrom hollow fields : and here were telescopes \nFor azure views ; and there a group of girls \nIn circle waited, whom the electric shock \nDislink\'d with shrieks and laughter : round the lake ^^ \nA little clock-work steamer paddling plied \nAnd shook the lilies : perch\'d about the knolls \n\n59 Taught them zvith facts. That is, entertained them with practical \ndemonstrations, such as the experiments in hydraulics, electricity, \nand the like, referred to in the following lines. \n\n63 Steep-up: perpendicular. A compound used by Shakespeare and \n\nagain by Tennyson in " Queen Mary." \n\n64 Wisp: Will-o\'-the-wisp. \n\n65, 66 A man with knobs, etc. That is, he fired a cannon by means \n\nof electricity. \n68 Azure views: views of the sky. \n70 Dislink\'d. In many compounds Tennyson uses dis for the more \n\ncommon un. \n\n\n\nPROLOGUE \n\nA dozen angry models jetted steam : \nA petty railway ran : a fire-balloon \nRose gem-like up before the dusky groves \nAnd dropt a fairy parachute and past : \nAnd there thro\' twenty posts of telegraph \nThey flash\'d a saucy message to and fro \nBetween the mimic stations ; so that sport \nWent hand in hand with science ; otherwhere \nPure sport : a herd of boys with clamor bowl\'d \nAnd stump\'d the wicket ; babies roll\'d about \nLike tumbled fruit in grass ; and men and maids \nArranged a country dance, and flew thro\' light \nAnd shadow, while the twangling violin \nStruck up with Soldier-laddie, and overhead \nThe broad ambrosial aisles of lofty lime \nMade noise with bees and breeze from end to end. \n\nStrange was the sight and smacking of the time ; \nAnd long we gazed, but satiated at length \nCame to the ruins. High-arch\'d and ivy-claspt, \nOf finest Gothic lighter than a fire, \nThro\' one wide chasm of time and frost they gave \nThe park, the crowd, the house ; but all within \n\n\n\n76 Past. Frequently used by Tennyson instead of passed. \n\n80 Otherwhere: elsewhere. \n\n82 Stump\'d the wicket: played cricket. \n\n85 Twangling: twanging. \n\n86 Soldier-laddie: a Scotch song. \n\n87 Ambrosial: divinely fragrant. \n\n88 Made noise with bees and breeze. Another instance of that faculty \n\nof the poet\'s mentioned in connection with 1. 20. \n\n89 Smacking: characteristic. \n\n90 Satiated. Accent on the first syllable, the second a obscure. \n\n92 Lighter than a Hre. Gothic architecture makes for lightness of \n\neffect. \n\n93 Of: made by. Gave: showed; revealed. \n\n\n\n8 THE PRINCESS \n\nThe sward was trim as any garden lawn : \n\nAnd here we lit on Aunt Elizabeth, \n\nAnd Lilia with the rest, and lady friends \n\nFrom neighbor seats ; and there was Ralph himself, \n\nA broken statue propt against the wall, \n\nAs gay as any. Lilia, wild with sport. \n\nHalf child, half woman as she was, had wound \n\nA scarf of orange round the stony helm. \n\nAnd robed the shoulders in a rosy silk, \n\nThat made the old warrior from his ivied nook \n\nGlow like a sunbeam : near his tomb a feast \n\nShone, silver-set ; about it lay the guests, \n\nAnd there we join\'d them : then the maiden Aunt \n\nTook this fair day for text, and from it preach\'d \n\nAn universal culture for the crowd, \n\nAnd all things great ; but we, unworthier, told \n\nOf college : he had climb\'d across the spikes \n\nAnd he had squeezed himself betwixt the bars. \n\nAnd he had breathed the Proctor\'s dogs ; and one \n\nDiscuss\'d his tutor, rough to common men, \n\nBut honeying at the whisper of a lord ; \n\nAnd one the Master, as a rogue in grain \n\nVeneer\'d with sanctimonious theory. \n\n\n\n98 Neighbor seats: neighboring country-seats. Ralph: the old Sir \nRalph referred to in 1. 26. \n\n102 Stony helm: the helmet of the stone statue. \n\n109 An universal. Should be a universal. \n\nIll, 112 He had clim\'b across the spikes, and he, etc.: this one \n[of the narrators] had scaled the walls about the college [after \nthe gates were closed for the night]; and that one, etc. \n\n113 He had breathed the Proctor\'s dogs: another had led the as- \nsistants of the proctor \xe2\x80\x94 the officer of the college whose work \nit is to maintain discipline \xe2\x80\x94 a chase in pursuit of them. These \nassistants the students call the proctor\'s bull-dogs. \n\n115 Honeying: growing sweet. \n\n116 Master: the head of the college. \n\n\n\nPROLOGUE \n\nBut while they talk\'d, above their heads I saw \nThe feudal warrior lady-clad ; which brought \nMy book to mind : and opening this I read \nOf old Sir Ralph a page or two that rang \nWith tilt and tourney ; then the tale of her \nThat drove her foes with slaughter from her walls, \nAnd much I praised her nobleness, and *\' Where," \nAsk\'d Walter, patting Lilia\'s head (she lay \nBeside him) " lives there such a woman now?" \n\nQuick answer\'d Lilia, " There are thousands now \nSuch women, but convention beats them down : \nIt is but bringing up ; no more than that : \nYou men have done it : how I hate you all ! \nAh, were I something great ! I wish I were \nSome mighty poetess, I would shame you then, \nThat love to keep us children! O I wish \nThat I were some great princess, I would build \nFar ofif from men a college like a man\'s. \nAnd I would teach them all that men are taught ; \nWe are twice as quick !" And here she shook aside \nThe hand that play\'d the patron with her curls. \n\nAnd one said smiling, " Pretty were the sight \nIf our old halls could change their sex, and flaunt \nWith prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans, \nAnd sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair. \n\n\n\n119 Lady-clad: adorned like a lady, with the scarf wound about his \n\nhelmet and the silken covering throv/n over his shoulders. \n128 Convention: conventionality. \n\n138 Play\'d the patron with: caressed in a patronizing way. \n\n139 Were: would be. \n\n141, 142 Prudes for proctors, etc. Notice Tennyson\'s fondness for \nalliteration as shown throughout the poem. \n\n\n\n10 THE PRINCESS \n\nI think they should not wear our rusty gowns, \nBut move as rich as Emperor-moths, or Ralph \nWho shines so in the corner ; yet I fear, \nIf there were many Lilias in the brood, \nHowever deep you might embower the nest, \nSome boy would spy it." \n\nAt this upon the sward \nShe tapt her tiny silken-sandal\'d foot : \n" That\'s your light way ; but I would make it death ^\'\' \nFor any male thing but to peep at us." \n\nPetulant she spoke, and at herself she laugh\'d ; \nA rosebud set with little wilful thorns, \nAnd sweet as English air could make her, she : \nBut Walter hail\'d a score of names upon her, \nAnd " petty Ogress," and " ungrateful Puss," \nAnd swore he long\'d at college, only long\'d. \nAll else was well, for she-society. \nThey boated and they cricketed ; they talk\'d \nAt wine, in clubs, or art, of politics ; ** \n\nThey lost their weeks ; they vext the souls of deans ; \nThey rode ; they betted ; made a hundred friends. \nAnd caught the blossom of the flying terms, \nBut miss\'d the mignonette of Vivian-place, \nThe little hearth-flower Lilia. Thus he spoke, \nPart banter, part affection, \n\n" True," she said. \n\n\n\n143 Rusty gowns: the black gowns worn by university students. \n\n144 Emperor-moths: large, handsome moths closely related to the silk- \n\nworm moth. \n\n156 Ogress: an imaginary monster supposed to devour human beings. \n\n161 Lost their weeks: lost, because of absence for a certain number \nof days, the credit for one of the nine terms of actual resi- \ndence required of the recipient of the bachelor\'s degree. \n\n\n\nPROLOGUE 11 \n\n" We doubt not that. O yes, you miss\'d us much, \nril stake my ruby ring upon it you did." \n\nShe held it out ; and as a parrot turns \nUp thro\' gilt wires a crafty loving eye, ^"^^ \n\nAnd takes a lady\'s finger with all care, \nAnd bites it for true heart and not for harm, \nSo he with Lilia\'s. Daintily she shriek\'d \nAnd wrung it. " Doubt my word again !" he said. \n" Come, listen ! here is proof that you were miss\'d : \nWe seven stay\'d at Christmas up to read ; \nAnd there we took one tutor as to read : \nThe hard-grain\'d Muses of the cube and square \nWere out of season : never man, I think, \nSo molder\'d in a sinecure as he: ^\xc2\xae** \n\nFor while our cloisters echo\'d frosty feet, \nAnd our long walks were stript as bare as brooms, \nWe did but talk you over, pledge you all \nIn wassail ; often, like as many girls \xe2\x80\x94 \nSick for the hollies and the yews of home \xe2\x80\x94 \nAs many little trifling Lilias \xe2\x80\x94 ^play\'d \nCharades and riddles as at Christmas here, \nAnd zvhafs my thought and zvhen and where and hozv, \nAnd often told a tale from mouth to mouth \nAs here at Christmas." \n\nShe remember\'d that : *^^ \n\nA pleasant game, she thought : she liked it more \n\n176 Read: study. \n\n178 Muses of the cube and square: mathematics. \n\n181 Cloisters: covered walks around the inner courts of monastic \nand collegiate buildings. \n\n184 Wassail: the drinking of healths. \n\n185 Sick for the hollies and the yews. That is, longing to be at home \n\nfor the Christmas holidays, which are typified by the holly \nand the yew. \n\n\n\n12 THE PRINCESS \n\nThan magic music, forfeits, all the rest. \n\nBut these \xe2\x80\x94 what kind of tales did men tell men, \n\nShe wonder\'d, by themselves ? \n\nA half-disdain \nPerch\'d on the pouted blossom of her lips ; \nAnd Walter nodded at me : " He began, \nThe rest would follow, each in turn ; and so \nWe forged a sevenfold story. Kind ? what kind ? \nChimeras, crotchets, Christmas solecisms, \nSeven-headed monsters only made to kill -^^ \n\nTime by the fire in winter." \n\n" Kill him now, \nThe tyrant ! kill him in the summer too," \nSaid Lilia ; *\' Why not now ?" the maiden Aunt. \n" Why not a summer\'s as a winter\'s tale ? \nA tale for summer as befits the time, \nAnd something it should be to suit the place, \nHeroic, for a hero lies beneath, \nGrave, solemn!" \n\nWalter warp\'d his mouth at this \nTo something so mock-solemn, that I laugh\'d \nAnd Lilia woke with sudden-shrilling mirth -\'^^ \n\nAn echo like a ghostly woodpecker. \nHid in the ruins ; till the maiden Aunt \n(A little sense of wrong had touch\'d her face \nWith color) turn\'d to me with "As you will; \n\n192 Magic music: a game in which something is hidden and the one \nseeking it is guided by music, that grows louder as he ap- \nproaches the spot where the article is concealed and softer as \nhe moves away from it. \n\n199 Chimeras: odd fancies. Crotchets: whims. Solecisms: ex- \ntravagances. \n208 Warp\'d: twisted. \n\n\n\nPROLOGUE 13 \n\nHeroic if you will, or what you will, \nOr be yourself your hero if you will." \n\n" Take Lilia, then, for heroine," clamor\'d he, \n" And make her some great Princess, six feet high. \nGrand, epic, homicidal ; and be you \nThe Prince to win her!" \n\n" Then follow me, the Prince,"-^ \nI answer\'d, " each be hero in his turn ! \nSeven and yet one, like shadows in a dream. \xe2\x80\x94 \nHeroic seems our Princess as required \xe2\x80\x94 \nBut something made to suit with time and place, \nA Gothic ruin and a Grecian house, \nA talk of college and of ladies\' rights, \nA feudal knight in silken masquerade. \nAnd, yonder, shrieks and strange experiments \nFor which the good Sir Ralph had burnt them all \xe2\x80\x94 \nThis were a medley ! we should have him back ^^^ \nWho told the \' Winter\'s Tale \' to do it for us. \nNo matter : we will say whatever comes. \nAnd let the ladies sing us, if they will. \nFrom time to time, some ballad or a song \nTo give us breathing-space." \n\nSo I began, \nAnd the rest follow\'d ; and the women sang \nBetween the rougher voices of the men. \nLike linnets in the pauses of the wind: \nAnd here I give the story and the songs. \n\n\n\n229 Had burnt them: would have had them burned [as witches]. \n\n230 Were: would be. \n\n231 Winter\'s Tale: a comedy by Shakespeare. \n\n\n\n14 THE PRINCESS \n\n\n\nA Prince I was, blue-eyed, and fair in face, \nOf temper amorous, as the first of May, \nWith lengths of yellow ringlet like a girl, \nFor on my cradle shone the Northern star. \n\nThere lived an ancient legend in our house. \nSome sorcerer, whom a far-off grandsire burnt \nBecause he cast no shadow, had foretold, \nDying, that none of all our blood should know \nThe shadow from the substance, and that one \nShould come to fight with shadows and to fall : ^^ \n\nFor so, my mother said, the story ran. \nAnd, truly, waking dreams were, more or less, \nAn old and strange aft\'ection of the house. \nMyself too had weird seizures^ Heaven knows what : \nOn a sudden in the midst of men and day. \nAnd while I walk\'d and talk\'d as heretofore, \nI seem\'d to move among a world of ghosts, \n\n4 For on my cradle shone the Northern star. That is, he was a \nnative of a northern country. \n\n7 Cast no shadow. He who cast no shadow was known to have sold \nhis soul to Satan. For an interesting story of such a man the \nstudent should read The Wonderful History of Peter Schlemihl, \nthe Man Who Lost His Shadow, by Adelbert von Chamisso, a \nnoted German lyric poet. The tale, dealing with the misery \nresulting to Schlemihl from his having sold his shadow, is a true \nclassic. It has been translated by Dr. Frederic Henry Hedge. \n14 Weird seizures. Lines 5-21 and all the other references to these \nseizures were added in the fifth edition of the poem. It is a \nquestion whether their addition was an improvement or not. \nDawson considers them injurious to the unity of the work, de- \nclaring that " they confuse the simple conception of his [the \nPrince\'s] character and graft on to his personality the foreign \nand somewhat derogatory idea of catalepsy." Other critics feel \nthem to be necessary to emphasize the poetic temperament of the \nPrince and excuse his apparent weakness. \n\n\n\nPART I 15 \n\nAnd feel myself the shadow of a dream. \n\nOur great court-Galen poised his gilt-head cane, \n\nAnd paw\'d his beard, and mutter\'d " catalepsy." ^\xc2\xae \n\nMy mother pitying made a thousand prayers ; \n\nMy mother was as mild as any saint. \n\nHalf-canonized by all that look\'d on her, \n\nSo gracious was her tact and tenderness : \n\nBut my good father thought a king a king ; \n\nHe cared not for the affection of the house ; \n\nHe held his scepter like a pendant\'s wand \n\nTo lash offense, and with long arms and hands \n\nReach\'d out, and pick\'d offenders from the mass \n\nFor judgment. \n\nNow it chanced that I had been, ^^ \nWhile life was yet in bud and blade, betroth\'d \nTo one, a neighboring Princess : she to me \nWas proxy-wedded with a bootless calf \nAt eight years old ; and still from time to time \nCame murmurs of her beauty from the South, \nAnd of her brethren, youths of puissance ; \nAnd still I wore her picture by my heart. \nAnd one dark tress ; and all around them both \nSweet thoughts would swarm as bees about their \nqueen. \n\n\n\n19 Court-Galen: court-physician. Galen, a noted Greek physician and \nscientist, lived in the second century A. D. \n\n23 Half -canonised : regarded as almost a saint. \n\n27 Pedant\'s zvand : schoolmaster\'s rod. \n\n33 Proxy-wedded with a bootless calf. In mediaeval times marriage by \nproxy was not rare. The bridgegroom who was unable to be \npresent at the ceremony was represented by a proxy, who went \nthrough the form of marriage in his place. Sometimes as a part \nof the ceremony the proxy bared his leg to the knee. \n\n36 Puissance: power, strength. \n\n\n\n16 THE PRINCESS \n\nBut when the days drew nigh that I should wed, *^ \nMy father sent ambassadors with furs \nAnd jewels, gifts, to fetch her: these brought back \nA present, a great labor of the loom ; \nAnd therewithal an answer vague as wind : \nBesides, they saw the king ; he took the gifts ; \nHe said there was a compact ; that was true : \nBut then she had a will ; was he to blame ? \nAnd maiden fancies ; loved to live alone \nAmong her women; certain,. would not wed. \n\nThat morning in the presence room I stood \xc2\xb0\'* \n\nWith Cyril and with Florian, my two friends : \nThe first, a gentleman of broken means \n(His father\'s fault) but given to starts and bursts \nOf revel ; and the last, my other heart, \nAnd almost my half-self, for still we moved \nTogether, twinn\'d as horse\'s ear and eye. \n\nNow, while they spake, I saw my father\'s face \nGrow long and troubled like a rising moon, \nInflamed with wrath : he started on his feet. \nTore the king\'s letter, snow\'d it down, and rent ^^ \n\nThe wonder of the loom thro\' warp and woof \nFrom skirt to skirt ; and at the last he sware \nThat he would send a hundred thousand men, \n\n44 Therewithal: therewith, at the same time. \n\n49 Would not wed. The Princess contended that at the age of eight \n\nyears she was too young to consent to the marriage and there- \nfore was not bound by the contract. \n\n50 Presence-room: audience chamber. \n\n60 Snow\'d it doivn. That is, tearing the letter into small bits, threw \nthem down so that they fell like flakes of snow. \n\n\n\nPART I 17 \n\nAnd bring her in a whirlwind : then he chew\'d \n\nThe thrice-turn\'d cud of wrath, and cook\'d his spleen, \n\nCommuning with his captains of the war. \n\nAt last I spoke : " My father, let me go. \nIt cannot be but some gross error lies \nIn this report, this answer of a king, \nWhom all men rate as kind and hospitable ; ^\xc2\xae \n\nOr, maybe, I myself, my bride once seen, \nWhate\'er my grief to find her less than fame, \nMay rue the bargain made." And Florian said : \n" I have a sister at the foreign court, \nWho moves about the Princess ; she, you know, \nWho wedded with a nobleman from thence : \nHe, dying lately, left her, as I hear, \nThe lady of three castles in that land : \nThro\' her this matter might be sifted clean." \nAnd Cyril whisper\'d : " Take me with you too. ^^ \n\nThen laughing, " What, if these weird seizures come \nUpon you in those lands, and no one near \nTo point you out the shadow from the truth ! \nTake me : I\'ll serve you better in a strait ; \nI grate on rusty hinges here " : but " No ! " \nRoar\'d the rough king, " you shall not ; we ourself \nWill crush her pretty maiden fancies dead \nIn iron gauntlets : break the council up." \n\nBut when the council broke, I rose and past \nThro\' the wild woods that hung about the town ; "-\'^ \nFound a still place, and pluck\'d her likeness out ; \n\n65 Cook\'d his spleen: nursed his wrath. In olden times the spleen wa? \n\nconsidered the seat of anger. \n84 Strait: difficult situation; emergency. \n\n\n\n18 THE PRINCESS \n\nLaid it on flowers, and watch *d it lying bathed \n\nIn the green gleam of dewy-tassel\'d trees : \n\nWhat were those fancies? wherefore break her troth? \n\nProud look\'d the lips : but while I meditated \n\nA wind arose and rush\'d upon the South, \n\nAnd shook the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks \n\nOf the wild woods together ; and a Voice \n\nWent with it, " Follow, follow, thou shalt win." \n\nThen, ere the silver sickle of that month ^^^ \n\nBecame her golden shield, I stole from court \nWith Cyril and with Florian, unperceived, \nCat-footed thro\' the town and half in dread \nTo hear my father\'s clamor at our backs \nWith Ho ! from some bay-window shake the night ; \nBut all was quiet : from the bastion\'d walls \nLike threaded spiders, one by one, we dropt, \nyVnd flying reach\'d the frontier: then we crost \nTo a livelier land ; and so by tilth and grange, \nAnd vines, and blowing bosks of wilderness, "^ \n\nWe gain\'d the mother-city thick with towers, \nAnd in the imperial palace found the king. \n\n\n\n93 Dewy-tasscVd: hung with catkins as in the hazel-wood [Hallam \n\nTennyson]. \n96 Rush\'d upon: blew toward. \n\n100 Silver sickle: new moon. \n\n101 Golden shield: full moon. \n\n106 Bastion\'d walls: walls having ramparts at the top. \n\n107 Like threaded spiders. That is, as spiders suddenly drop straight \n\nwhile spinning out their webs. \n\n109 Livelier land. They were going toward the south and consequent- \n\nly the verdure showed more life. Tilth: cultivated land. Grange: \nfarmhouse. \n\n110 Blowing bosks of wilderness: uncultivated thickets blooming with \n;.i- flowers [Dawson]. \n\n111 ;1 Mother-city : capital; metropolis. \n\n\n\nPART I 19 \n\nHis name was Gama ; crack\'d and small his voice, \nBut bland the smile that like a wrinkling wind \nOn glassy water drove his cheek in lines ; \nA little dry old man, without a star, \nNot like a king: three days he feasted us, \nAnd on the fourth I spake of why we came. \nAnd my betroth\'d. " You do us, Prince," he said, \nAiring a snowy hand and signet gem, ^-^ \n\n"All honor. We remember love ourself \nIn our sweet youth : there did a compact pass \nLong summers back, a kind of ceremony \xe2\x80\x94 \nI think the year in which our olives fail\'d. \nI would you had her, Prince, with all my heart, \nWith my full heart : but there were widows here, \nTwo widows, Lady Psyche, Lady Blanche ; \nThey fed her theories, in and out of place \nMaintaining that with equal husbandry \nThe woman were an equal to the man. *^\xc2\xb0 \n\nThey harp\'d on this ; with this our banquets rang ; \nOur dances broke and buzz\'d in knots of talk ; \nNothing but this ; my very ears were hot \nTo hear them : knowledge, so my daughter held. \nWas all in all : they had but been, she thought, \nAs children ; thev must lose the child, assume \n\n\n\n116 Without a star: wearing no orders or military decorations. \n\n120 Signet-gem: a seal ring in which the seal is cut on a precious \n\nstone. \n\n121 Ourself. In this reading we follow Rolfe, who argues that in the \n\nlast edition the poet everywhere else changed the form to our- \nself and therefore must have intended to do so here, though \neven in the edition of 1884 ourselves is given. \n129 Husbandry: here, training, \n\n135 They. That is, women in general. \n\n136 They must lose the child. That is, they must cease to act and \n\nthink like children and become serious, purposeful women. Cf. \n1. 133, Prologue. \n\n\n\n20 THE PRINCESS \n\nThe woman : then, Sir, awful odes she wrote, \n\nToo awful, sure, for what they treated of. \n\nBut all she is and does is awful ; odes \n\nAbout this losing of the child ; and rhymes ^*\xc2\xae \n\nAnd dismal lyrics, prophesying change \n\nBeyond all reason : these the women sang ; \n\nAnd they that know such things \xe2\x80\x94 I sought but peace ; \n\nNo critic I\xe2\x80\x94 would call them masterpieces : \n\nThey master\'d me. At last she begg\'d a boon, \n\nA certain summer-palace which I have \n\nHard by your father\'s frontier : I said no. \n\nYet being an easy man, gave it : and there. \n\nAll wild to found an University \n\nFor maidens, on the spur she fled ; and more ^^\xc2\xae \n\nWe know not, \xe2\x80\x94 only this : they see no men, \n\nNot even her brother Arac, nor the twins \n\nHer brethren, tho\' they love her, look upon her \n\nAs on a kind of paragon ; and I \n\n(Pardon me saying it) were much loth to breed \n\nDispute betwixt myself and mine : but since \n\n\'(And I confess with right) you think me bound \n\nIn some sort, I can give you letters to her; \n\nAnd yet, to speak the truth, I rate your chance \n\nAlmost at naked nothing." \n\nThus the king; "<\xc2\xbb \n\nAnd r, tho\' nettled that he seem\'d to slur \nWith garrulous ease and oily courtesies \nOur formal compact, yet, not less (all frets \nBut chafing me on fire to find my bride) \n\n\n\n149 An. Should be a. \n\n150 On the spur: post-haste. \n\n155 Pardon me saying. For is understood. \n\n163 Frets: irritations. \n\n\n\nPART I 21 \n\nWent forth again with both my friends. We rode \n\nMany a long league back to the North. At last \n\nFrom hills, that look\'d across a land of hope, \n\nWe dropt with evening on a rustic town \n\nSet in a gleaming river\'s crescent-curve, \n\nClose at the boundary of the liberties ; ^^\xc2\xb0 \n\nThere, enter\'d an old hostel, call\'d mine host \n\nTo council, plied him with his richest wines, \n\nAnd showed the late-writ letters of the king. \n\nHe with a long low sibilation, stared \nAs blank as death in marble : then exclaim\'d \nAverring it was clear against all rules \nFor any man to go : but as his brain \nBegan to mellow, " If the king," he said, \n\'* Had given us letters, was he bound to speak ? \nThe king would bear him out " ; and at the last \xe2\x80\x94 ^^^ \nThe summer of the vine in all his veins \xe2\x80\x94 \n" No doubt that we might make it worth his while. \nShe once had past that way ; he heard her speak : \nShe scared him; life! he never saw the like; \nShe look\'d as grand as doomsday and as grave : \nAnd he, he reverenced his liege-lady there ; \nHe always made a point to post with mares ; \nHis daughter and his housemaid were the boys : \nThe land, he understood, for miles about \n\n167 A land of hope. Remember that it was spring-time. \n\n170 Liberties: the outlying grounds of the university. \n\n172 Plied him with: pressed upon him. \n\n174 Sibilation: hissing sound. Here, whistle of astonishment. \n\n175 As blank as death in marble: with as fixed and expressionless a \n\ngaze as that of a death-mask. \n178 Began to mellow: began to yield to the influence of the wine. \n181 The summer of the vine: the warmth of the wine. \n188 Boys: postilions and stable-boys. \n\n\n\n22 THE PRINCESS \n\nWas till\'d by women ; all the swine were sows, \nAnd all the dogs " \xe2\x80\x94 \n\nBut while he jested thus, \nA thought flash\'d thro\' me which I clothed in act, \nRemembering how we three presented Maid, \nOr Nymph, or Goddess, at high tide of feast, \nIn masque or pageant at my father\'s court. \nWe sent mine host to purchase female gear ; \nHe brought it, and himself, a sight to shake \nThe midriff of despair with laughter, holp \nTo lace us up, till each in maiden plumes \nWe rustled : him we gave a costly bribe \nTo guerdon silence, mounted our good steeds, \nAnd boldly ventured on the liberties. \n\nWe followed up the river as we rode. \nAnd rode till midnight, when the college lights \nBegan to glitter firefly-like in copse \nAnd linden alley : then we past an arch. \nWhereon a woman-statue rose with wings \nFrom four wing\'d horses dark against the stars ; \nAnd some inscription ran along the front, \nBut deep in shadow : further on we gain\'d \nA little street half garden and half house, \nBut scarce could hear each other speak for noise \nOf clocks and chimes, like silver hammers falling \n\n\n\n192 Clothed in act: put into execution. \n\n193 Presented: represented. \n\n194 High tide of feast: festival time. \n\n198 A sight to shake the midriff of despair with laughter. That is, \none that would have made Despair herself laugh heartily. Holp. \nThe old past tense of help. \n\n201 To guerdon: to be a recompense for; to reward. \n\n202 Liberties. Cf. L 170. \n\n\n\nPART I 23 \n\nOn silver anvils, and the splash and stir \nOf fountains spouted up and showering down \nIn meshes of the jasmine and the rose ; \nAnd all about us peal\'d the nightingale, \nRapt in her song, and careless of the snare. \n\nThere stood a bust of Pallas for a sign, \nBy two sphere lamps blazon\'d like Heaven and Earth "^ \nWith constellation and with continent, \nAbove an entry: riding in, we call\'d ; \nA plump-arm\'d ostleress and a stable wench \nCame running at the call, and help\'d us down. \nThen stept a buxom hostess forth, and sail\'d. \nFull-blown, before us into rooms which gave \nUpon a pillar\'d porch, the bases lost \nIn laurel : her we ask\'d of that and this, \nAnd who were tutors. " Lady Blanche," she said, \n" And Lady Psyche." " Which was prettiest, ^30 \n\nBest-natured?\'\' " Lady Psyche." " Hers are we," \nOne voice, we cried ; and I sat down and wrote \nIn such a hand as when a field of corn \nBows all its ears before the roaring East : \n\n" Three ladies of the Northern empire pray \nYour Highness would enroll them with your own, \nAs Lady Psyche\'s pupils." \n\n219 Pallas: the Greek name for Minerva, the goddess of wisdom. \n\n220 Blazon\'d like Heaven and Earth. That is, on one was depicted \n\nthe heavens and on the other the terrestrial globe. \n\n226 Gave: opened out upon. Cf. 1. 93 of Prologue. \n\n229 Tutors. At the English universities each student is under a tutor, \nwho advises him concerning his choice of studies and super- \nvises his work, \n\n233, 234 In such a hand, etc. An apt description of the delicate, \nslanting handwriting of women of Tennyson\'s day. \n\n\n\n24 THE PRINCESS \n\nThis I seal\'d : \nThe seal was Cupid bent above a scroll, \nAnd o\'er his head Uranian Venus hung, \nAnd raised the blinding bandage from his eyes. ^*^ \nI gave the letter to be sent with dawn ; \nAnd then to bed, where half in doze I seem\'d \nTo float about a glimmering night, and watch \nA full sea glazed with muffled moonlight swell \nOn some dark shore just seen that it was rich. \n\nII \n\nAs thro\' the land at eve we went, \n\nAnd pluck\'d the ripen\'d ears, \' \nWe fell out, my wife and I, \nO we fell out I know not why, \n\nAnd kiss\'d again with tears. \nAnd blessings on the falling out \n\nThat all the more endears, \nWhen we fall out with those we love \n\nAnd kiss again with tears! \nFor when we came where lies the child \n\nWe lost ia other years, \nThere above the little grave, \nO there above the little grave. \n\nWe kiss\'d again with tears. \n\n239 Uranian Venus: the heavenly Aphrodite, daughter of Uranus, who \n\ntypifies spiritual love in contrast to common, earthly love. \n\n240 Raised the blinding bandage. Cupid \xe2\x80\x94 in Roman mythology the \n\nblind god of love \xe2\x80\x94 is sometimes shown blindfolded. \n\n244 MuMed moonlight: moonlight shining through vaporous clouds. \n\nSong. The songs separating the seven parts of the poem are supposed \nto be sung by the women of the party as suggested in 1. 233- \n235 of the Prologue. They did not appear in the first two edi- \ntions, though the poet had included them in his original scheme \nof the work. Notice that in all of them the theme is love \xe2\x80\x94 love \nfor husband, wife, lover, child. In the recurrence of this theme \nthe poet suggests to us again and again the inevitable failure of \nany scheme of life which ignores or suppresses feelings that are \nnatural and right. \n\n\n\nPART II 25 \n\nAt break of day the College Portress came : \n\nShe brought us Academic silks, in hue \n\nThe lilac, with a silken hood to each, \n\nAnd zoned with gold ; and now when these were on, \n\nAnd we as rich as moths from dusk cocoons, \n\nShe curtseying her obeisance, let us know \n\nThe Princess Ida waited. Out we paced, \n\nI first, and following thro\' the porch that sang \n\nAll round with laurel, issued in a court \n\nCompact of lucid marbles, boss\'d with lengths ^^ \n\nOf classic frieze, with ample awnings gay \n\nBetwixt the pillars, and with great urns of flowers. \n\nThe Muses and the Graces, group\'d in threes, \n\nEnring\'d a billowing fountain in the midst ; \n\nAnd here and there on lattice edges lay \n\nOr book or lute ; but hastily we past, \n\nAnd up a flight of stairs into the hall. \n\nThere at a board by tome and paper sat, \nWith two tame leopards couch\'d beside her throne. \nAll beauty compass\'d in a female form, ^ \n\nThe Princess ; liker to the inhabitant \nOf some clear planet close upon the Sun, \nThan our man\'s earth ; such eyes were in her head, \nAnd so much grace and power, breathing down \n\n\n\n2 Academic silks: silk gowns worn by students. \n\n4 Zoned with gold: having golden girdles. \n\n8, 9 Sang all around with laurel: was filled with the music of the \nrustling laurel branches that surrounded it. \n10 Compact: made. Boss\'d: carved in relief. \n\n13 The Muses: in classical mythology, nine goddesses who presided \nover song, poetry, and the arts and sciences. The Graces: three \nbeautiful sister goddesses \xe2\x80\x94 Euphrosyne, Aglaia and Thalia by \nname \xe2\x80\x94 who were regarded as the inspirers of the qualities which \ngive attractiveness to wisdom, love, and social intercourse. \n\n\n\n26 THE PRINCESS \n\nFrom over her arch\'d brows, with every turn \nLived thro\' her to the tips of her long hands, \nAnd to her feet. She rose her height, and said : \n\n" We give you welcome : not without redound \nOf use and glory to yourselves ye come, \nThe first-fruits of the stranger : aftertime, ^\xc2\xb0 \n\nAnd that full voice which circles round the grave, \nWill rank you nobly, mingled up with me. \nWhat ! are the ladies of your land so tall ?" \n" We of the court," said Cyril. " From the court," \nShe answer\'d, "then ye know the Prince?" and he: \n" The climax of his age ! as tho\' there were \nOne rose in all the world, your Highness that, \nHe worships your ideal." She replied : \n" We scarcely thought in our own hall to hear \nThis barren verbiage, current among men, ^^ \n\nLight coin, the tinsel clink of compliment. \nYour flight from out your bookless wilds would seem \nAs arguing love of knowledge and of power ; \nYour language proves you still the child. Indeed, \nWe dream not of him : when we set our hand \nTo this great work, we purposed with ourself \nNever to wed. You likewise will do well, \nLadies, in entering here, to cast and fling \n\n\n\n28 Redound: return, requital. \n\n30 The stranger: those without King Gama\'s realm. Aftertime: \n\nhereafter; or, perhaps, posterity. \n\n31 That full voice: fame. \n\n35 Then ye know the Prince? With all her superiority, the Princess \n\nis not entirely lacking in womanly curiosity. \n40 Barren verbiage: unprofitable, empty wordiness. \n\n44 The child. See 1. 136, Part I. \n\n45 We dream not of him. However, she is not averse to hearing \n\nsomething concerning him. \n\n\n\nPART II 27 \n\nThe tricks which make us toys of men, that so, \nSome future time, if so indeed you will, ^^ \n\nYou may with those self-styled our lords ally \nYour fortunes, justlier balanced, scale with scale." \n\nAt those high words, we, conscious of ourselves, \nPerused the matting; then an officer \nRose up, and read the statutes, such as these : \nNot for three years to correspond with home ; \nNot for three years to cross the liberties ; \nNot for three years to speak with any men ; \nAnd many more, which hastily subscribed, \nWe enter\'d on the boards : and " Now," she cried, "^\'" \n" Ye are green wood, see ye warp not. Look, our hall ! \nOur statues ! \xe2\x80\x94 not of those that men desire, \nSleek Odalisques, or oracles of mode, \nNor stunted squaws of West or East ; but she \nThat taught the Sabine how to rule, and she \nThe foundress of the Babylonian wall. \nThe Carian Artemisia strong in war. \n\n\n\n53 Conscious of ourselves. That is, embarrassed by the consciousness \n\nof the deception they were practicing. \n55 Statutes: rules of the university. \n60 Enter\'d on the boards: entered as students. \n63 Odalisques: female slaves in the harem of the Sultan of Turkey. \n\nMode: fashion. \n\n65 She that taught the Sabine: the wood-nymph Egeria, who by her \n\nwise counsels assisted Numa Pompilius (a Sabine by birth) to \nframe wise laws for Rome, whose second king he was. \n\n66 The foundress of the Babylonian wall: Semiramis, a legendary As- \n\nsyrian queen who was once believed to have built many great \ncities, Babylon among them. \n\n67 The Carian Artimisia: the Carian queen who accompanied Xerxes \n\nin his expedition against Greece. At the battle of Salarais she \ndistinguished herself, showing wonderful courage. \n\n\n\n28 THE PRINCESS \n\nThe Rhodope that built the pyramid, \n\nCleHa, Corneha, with the Pahnyrene \n\nThat fought AureHan, and the Roman brows "^^ \n\nOf Agrippina. Dwell with these, and lose \n\nConvention, since to look on noble forms \n\nMakes noble thro\' the sensuous organism \n\nThat which is higher. O lift your natures up ; \n\nEmbrace our aims ; work out your freedom. Girls, \n\nKnowledge is now no more a fountain seal\'d! \n\nDrink deep, until the habits of the slave, \n\nThe sins of emptiness, gossip and spite \n\nAnd slander, die. Better not be at all \n\nThan not be noble. Leave us ; you- may go : ^\xc2\xae \n\nTo-day the Lady Psyche will harangue \n\nThe fresh arrivals of the week before ; \n\nFor they press in from all the provinces. \n\nAnd fill the hive." \n\nShe spoke, and bowing waved \nDismissal : back again we crost the court \n\n68 The Rhodope. Rhodopis, here referred to, was a beautiful Thracian \n\nwho was taken to Egypt as a slave. She was given her freedom \nand before her death amassed a fortune, but she did not build \na pyramid. Perhaps the poet meant to intimate by this mis- \ntake made by the Princess that accuracy is not a feminine trait. \n\n69 Clelia: a Roman maiden who, having been given to Porsena as a \n\nhostage, escaped on horseback, swimming her steed across the \nRiver Tiber. She was captured and sent back to Porsena, who \ngave her her liberty as a reward for her bravery. Cornelia: a \nRoman matron, daughter of Scipio Africanus and mother of the \nGracchi. She was noted for her wisdom as well as for her \nvirtues. The Pahnyrene: Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, who led \nher people against the Romans under Aurelian, and who was de- \nfeated and taken as a captive to Rome. \n\n71 Agrippina: a noted Roman matron; granddaughter of the Emperor \n\nAugustus and wife of his general, Germanicus. Like Cornelia, \nshe is remembered for her strength of character. \n\n72 Convention. See I. 128, Prologue. \n\n73 The sensuous organism: the senses. \n\n80 Us. The Princess uses the plural of royalty. \n\n\n\nPART II 29 \n\nTo Lady Psyche\'s : as we enter\'d in, \n\nThere sat along the forms, Hke morning doves \n\nThat sun their milky bosoms on the thatch, \n\nA patient range of pupils ; she herself \n\nErect behind a desk of satin-wood, , \xe2\x80\xa2* \n\nA quick brunette, well-molded, falcon-eyed, \n\nAnd on the hither side, or so she look\'d, \n\nOf twenty summers. At her left, a child, \n\nIn shining draperies, headed like a star. \n\nHer maiden babe, a double April old, \n\nAglaia slept. We sat : the Lady glanced : \n\nThen Florian, but no livelier than the dame \n\nThat whisper\'d "Asses\' ears " among the sedge, \n\n" My sister." " Comely, too, by all that\'s fair," \n\nSaid Cyril. " O hush, hush !" and she began. \' ^\xc2\xab\xc2\xab \n\n\n\n87 Forms: benches. \n\n90 A desk of satin-wood. In his Study of the Princess Mr. Dawson \n\nsays: "Very properly ... the path of knowledge, thorny to the \ntyrannous male, is made comfortable there [i. e. in the university \nof the Princess]. The ladies drink in science * Leaning deep in \nbroidered down,\' as is befitting. Everything matches in that \nuniversity. No common pine \xe2\x80\x94 the professional desk is of satin- \nwood." \n\n91 Quick: animated, lively. \n\n93 A child. Mr. Dawson calls Psyche\'s child the heroine of the poem. \n\nHe says: " Ridiculous in the lecture-room, the babe, in the \npoem, as in the songs, is made the central point upon which the \nplot turns; for the unconscious child is the concrete embodiment \nof Nature herself, clearing away all merely intellectual theories \nby her silent influence . . . Whenever the plot thickens the \nbabe appears . . . O fatal babe! more fatal to the hopes of \nwomen than the doomful horse to the proud towers of Ilion; \nfor through thee the walls of pride are breached and all the \nconquering affections flock in." Follow the child through the \nstory and see how true is the critic\'s estimate of the part it \nplays. \n\n94 Headed like a star: with shining golden hair. \n\n97, 98 The dame, etc. Tennyson follows Chaucer in making it the \nwife of Midas and not his barber who revealed the secret of his \nhaving asses\' ears. \n\n\n\n30 THE PRINCESS \n\n\'\' This world was once a fluid haze of light, \nTill toward the center set the starry tides, \nAnd eddied into suns, that wheeling cast \nThe planets : then the monster, then the man ; \nTattoo\'d or woaded, winter-clad in skins, \nRaw from the prime, and crushing down his mate ; \nAs yet we find in barbarous isles, and here \nAmong the lowest." \n\nThereupon she took \nA bird\'s-eye view of all the ungracious past ; \nGlanced at the legendary Amazon \nAs emblematic of a nobler age ; \nAppraised the Lycian custom, spoke of those \nThat lay at wine with Lar and Lucumo ; \nRan down the Persian, Grecian, Roman lines \nOf empire, and the woman\'s state in each. \nHow far from just; till warming with her theme \nShe fulmined out her scorn of laws Salique \nAnd little-footed China, touch\'d on Mahomet \n\n\n\n101-104 This xvorld was once, etc. This is the nebular hypothesis, \nformulated by the French astronomer LaPlace at about the \nbeginning of the nineteenth century. \n\n105 Woaded: stained with the juice of the woad plant. It is said \nthat the ancient Britons painted their bodies with this juice. \n\n107 As yet: such as yet. \n\n109 The ungracious past: that is ungracious in its treatment of women. \n\n112 Appraised : praised. By the Lycian custom children took the family \n\nname of the mother instead of that of the father, and traced \ntheir descent in the female line. \n\n113 Lay at wine. Among the Etruscans the women attended the ban- \n\nquets with the men. At these, as at all meals, those present \nreclined on couches. Lar [or Lars\'] and Lucumo: Etruscan \ntitles of honor. \n\n117 Fulmined: thundere Laws Salique: laws forbidding inheritance \n\nto pass through a female line. The Salic law in France ex- \ncluded women from the throne. \n\n118 Little-footed China. So called by her because of the Chinese \n\npractice of binding the feet of girls and women. Mahomet is \nsaid to have declared that women were without souls. \n\n\n\nPART II 31 \n\nWith much contempt, and came to chivalry ; \n\nWhen some respect, however shght, was paid ^^\'^ \n\nTo woman, superstition all awry : \n\nHowever, then commenced the dawn : a beam \n\nHad slanted forward, falling in a land \n\nOf promise ; fruit would follow. Deep, indeed, \n\nTheir debt of thanks to her who first had dared \n\nTo leap the rotten pales of prejudice, \n\nDisyoke their necks from custom, and assert \n\nNone lordlier than themselves but that which made \n\nWoman and man. She had founded ; they must build. \n\nHere might they learn whatever men were taught: ^^^ \n\nLet them not fear : some said their heads were less : \n\nSome men\'s were small ; not they the least of men ; \n\nFor often fineness compensated size : \n\nBesides the brain was like the hand, and grew \n\nWith using; thence the man\'s, if more was more ; \n\nHe took advantage of his strength to be \n\nFirst in the field: some ages had been lost; \n\nBut woman ripen\'d earlier, and her life \n\nWas longer ; and albeit their glorious names \n\nWere fewer, scatter\'d stars, yet since in truth ^*^ \n\nThe highest is the measure of the man. \n\nAnd not the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay, \n\nNor those horn-handed breakers of the glebe, \n\nBut Homer, Plato, Verulam ; even so \n\nWith woman : and in arts of government \n\n\n\n121 Superstition all awry: in spite of superstition. \n125-129 To her who had, etc. That is, to the Princess. \n\n143 Glebe: soil, ground. \n\n144 Homer: an epic poet of Greece who flourished about 1000 B. C. \n\nPlato: a Greek philosopher (429-347 B. C). Verulam: Sir \nFrancis Bacon, Baron \\\'eru]am, an English philosopher and \nstatesman (1561-1626). \n\n\n\n32 THE PRINCESS \n\nElizabeth and others ; arts of war \n\nThe peasant Joan and others; arts of grace \n\nSappho and others vied with any man : \n\nAnd, last not least, she who had left her place, \n\nAnd bow\'d her state to them, that they might grow ^^^ \n\nTo use and power on this Oasis, lapt \n\nIn the arms of leisure, sacred from the blight \n\nOf ancient influence and scorn. \n\nAt last \nShe rose upon a wind of prophecy \nDilating on the future : " everywhere \nTwo heads in council, two beside the hearth, \nTwo in the tangled business of the world. \nTwo in the liberal oflices of life. \nTwo plummets dropt for one to sound the abyss \nOf science and the secrets of the mind; ^\xc2\xae\xc2\xb0 \n\nMusician, painter, sculptor, critic, more ; \nAnd everywhere the broad and bounteous Earth \nShould bear a double growth of those rare souls. \nPoets, whose thoughts enrich the blood of the world." \n\n\n\n146 Elizabeth: Queen of England from 1533 to 1603. \n\n147 The peasant Joan: Joan of Arc, a French peasant girl (born in \n\n1412) who believed that she had been directly and repeatedly \ncommanded by God to espouse the cause of the Orleanist party \nand the Dauphin of France (afterward Charles VII) against \nthe Burgundians, who had sworn allegiance to Henry V of \nEngland. Having persuaded the Dauphin to give her a com- \nmand in the army, she assumed male attire and led her troops \nto victory a number of times, thus making it possible for him \nto be crowned king at Rheims in 1429. Finally captured by \nthe Burgundians, she was sold by them to the English, who \nburned her at the stake as a sorceress in 1431 \n\n148 Sappho: a famous poetess of Greece who flourished about 600 B. \n\nC. Her work is noted for its beauty and feeling. \n149153 She who had, etc. She again refers to the Princess. \n151 Lapt: enfolded. \n\n156-160 Two heads, etc. That is, a time will come when man and \nwoman will work side by side as equals. \n\n\n\nPART II 33 \n\nShe ended here, and beckon\'d us : the rest \nParted ; and, glowing full-faced welcome, she \nBegan to address us, and was moving on \nIn gratulation, till as when a boat \nTacks and the slacken\'d sail flaps, all her voice \nFaltering and fluttering in her throat, she cried, ^^\xc2\xae \n\n" My brother !" " Well, my sister." " Oh," she said, \n\'\' What do you here? and in this dress? and these? \nWhy, who are these ? a wolf within the fold ! \nA pack of wolves ! the Lord be gracious to me ! \nA plot, a plot, a plot, to ruin all !" \n\'\' No plot, no plot," he answer\'d. " Wretched boy, \nHow saw you not the inscription on the gate. \nLet no man enter in on pain of death ?" \n**And if I had," he answer\'d, " who could think \nThe softer Adams of your Academe, ^\xc2\xae\xc2\xae \n\nO sister. Sirens tho\' they be, were such \nAs chanted on the blanching bones of men ?" \n" But you will find it otherwise," she said. \n" You jest : ill jesting with edge-tools ! my vow \nBinds me to speak, and O that iron will, \nThat axelike edge unturnable, our Head, \nThe Princess !" " Well then, Psyche, take my life \nAnd nail me like a weasel on a grange \n\n166 Parted: departed. \n\n177 The inscription on the gate. See 1. 209, Part I. \n\n180 Academe: academy. \n\n181 Sirens: sea nymphs who had the power of charming by their \n\nsong all who heard them, so that the sailors who passed the \nisland on which they lived were irresistibly impelled to cast \nthemselves into the sea in their desire to see the singers. Siren \nhas come to be a term applied to any especially attractive woman, \nand what Florian means is that, though the charms of the \nwomen of the university, give them great power, they surely \nwould not take pleasure in the destruction of men as the real \nSirens did. \n188 Grange: here, granary. \n\n\n\n34 THE PRINCESS \n\nFor warning ; bury me beside the gate, \n\nAnd cut this epitaph above my bones : ^^ \n\nHere lies a brother by a sister slain. \n\nAll for the common good of womankind/\' \n\n" Let me die too," said Cyril, " having seen \n\nAnd heard the Lady Psyche." \n\nI struck in : \n" Albeit so mask\'d, Madam, I love the truth ; \nReceive it ; and in me behold the Prince \nYour countryman, affianced years ago \nTo the Lady Ida : here, for here she was, \nAnd thus (what other way was left?) I came." \n" O Sir, O Prince, I have no country, none ; -\'^^ \n\nIf any, this ; but none. Whate\'er I was \nDisrooted, what I am is grafted here. \nAffianced, Sir? love-whispers may not breathe \nWithin this vestal limit, and how should I, \nWho am not mine, say, live : the thunderbolt \nHangs silent ; but prepare : I speak ; it falls." \n" Yet pause," I said : " for that inscription there, \nI think no more of deadly lurks therein, \nThan in a clapper clapping in a garth, \nTo scare the fowl from fruit : if more there be, -^** \n\nIf more and acted on, what follows ? war ; \nYour own work marr\'d : for this your Academe, \nWhichever side be victor, in the halloo \nWill topple to the trumpet down, and pass \nWith all fair theories only made to gild \n\n195 So mask\'d. That is, dressed up as he is in women\'s clothes. \n205 Not mine: not my own mistress. \n207 For: as for. \n\n209 Clapper: a contrivance for making a noise to scare away the birds. \nGarth: garden. \n\n\n\nPART II 35 \n\nA stormless summer." \'\' Let the Princess judge \nOf that," she said : " farewell, Sir \xe2\x80\x94 and to you. \nI shudder at the sequel, but I go." \n\n"Are you that Lady Psyche," I rejoin\'d, \n\n" The fifth in line from that old Florian, 220 \n\nYet hangs his portrait in my father\'s hall \n\n(The gaunt old baron with his beetle brow \n\nSun-shaded in the heat of dusty fights) \n\nAs he bestrode my grandsire, when he fell, \n\nAnd all else fled ? we point to it, and we say, \n\nThe loyal warmth of Florian is not cold, \n\nBut branches current yet in kindred veins." \n\n\'\' Are you that Psyche," Florian added ; " she \n\nWith whom I sang about the morning hills. \n\nFlung ball, flew kite, and raced the purple fly, -^^ \n\nAnd snared the squirrel of the glen ? are you \n\nThat Psyche, wont to bind my throbbing brow. \n\nTo smooth my pillow, mix the foaming draught \n\nOf fever, tell me pleasant tales, and read \n\nMy sickness down to happy dreams? are you \n\nThat brother-sister Psyche, both in one? \n\nYou were that Psyche, but what are you now ?" \n\n" You are that Psyche," Cyril said, " for whom \n\nI would be that forever which I seem, \n\nWoman, if I might sit beside your feet, 240 \n\nAnd glean your scatter\'d sapience." \n\n\n\n222, 223 Beetle-brow Sun-shaded. There has been much discussion \nof this passage. Some critics take it to mean that his eyes \nwere shaded from the sun by his shaggy eyebrows; others that \nhis forehead was tanned by exposure to the sun. \n\n224 Bestrode: stood over to protect. \n\n227 But branches current yet, etc.: but flows to this day in the veins \nof his descendants. \n\n\n\n36 THE PRINCESS \n\nThen once more, \n" Are you that Lady Psyche," I began, \n*\' That on her bridal morn before she past \nFrom all her old companions, when the king \nKiss\'d her pale cheek, declared that ancient ties \nWould still be dear beyond the southern hills; \nThat were there any of our people there \nIn want or peril, there was one to hear \nAnd help them? look! for such are these and I." \n\'\'Are you that Psyche," Florian ask\'d, " to whom, "\xc2\xae \nIn gentler days, your arrow-wounded fawn \nCame flying while you sat beside the well ? \nThe creature laid his muzzle on your lap, \nAnd sobb\'d, and you sobb\'d with it, and the blood \nWas sprinkled on your kirtle, and you wept. \nThat was fawn\'s blood, not brother\'s, yet you wept. \nO by the bright head of my little niece. \nYou were that Psyche, and what are you now ?" \n" You are that Psyche," Cyril said again, \n" The mother of the sweetest little maid *"\xc2\xae \n\nThat ever crow\'d for kisses." \n\n" Out upon it ! " \nShe answer\'d, " peace ! and why should I not play \nThe Spartan Mother with emotion, be \nThe Lucius Junius Brutus of my kind ? \nHim you call great : he for the common weal, \nThe fading politics of mortal Rome, \n\n\n\n255 Kirtle: an outer petticoat. \n\n263 The Spartan Mother believed it to be her duty to sacrifice natural \n\nfeeling for the public good. \n\n264 Lucius Junius Brutus, when Roman consul (about 500 B. C), put \n\nto death his two sons because they had taken part in a con- \nspiracy to restore the Tarquins to power. \n\n\n\nPART II 37 \n\nAs I might slay this child, if good need were, \n\nSlew both his sons : and I, shall I, on whom \n\nThe secular emancipation turns \n\nOf half this world, be swerved from right to save ^^^ \n\nA prince, a brother? a little will I yield. \n\nBest so, perchance, for us, and well for you. \n\nO hard, when love and duty clash ! I fear \n\nMy conscience will not count me fleckless ; yet \xe2\x80\x94 \n\nHear my conditions: promise (otherwise \n\nYou perish) as you came, to slip away \n\nTo-day, to-morrow, soon: it shall be said, \n\nThese women were too barbarous, would not learn ; \n\nThey fled, who might have shamed us : promise, all." \n\nWhat could we else, we promised each ; and she, -^\'* \nLike some wild creature newly-caged, commenced \nA to-and-fro, so pacing till she paused \nBy Florian ; holding out her lily arms \nTook both his hands, and smiling faintly said : \n" I knew you at the first ; tho\' you have grown \nYou scarce have alter\'d : I am sad and glad \nTo see you, Florian. I give thee to death, \nMy brother ! it was duty spoke, not I. \nMy needful seeming harshness, pardon it. \nOur mother, is she well ?" \n\nWith that she kiss\'d -^\xc2\xab \nHis forehead, then, a moment after, clung \nAbout him, and betwixt them blossom\'d up \nFrom out a common vein of memory \nSweet household talk, and phrases of the hearth, \nAnd far allusion, till the gracious dews \n\n274 Fleckless: literally, without spot or blemish; here blameless, \n295 Gracious dews: tears. \n\n\n\n38 THE PRINCESS \n\nBegan to glisten and to fall : and while \n\nThey stood, so rapt, we gazing, came a voice, \n\n" I brought a message here from Lady Blanche." \n\nBack started she, and turning round we saw \n\nThe Lady Blanche\'s daughter where she stood, ^*^^ \n\nMehssa, with her hand upon the lock, \n\nA rosy blonde, and in a college gown, \n\nThat clad her like an April daffodilly \n\n(Her mother\'s color), with her lips apart, \n\nAnd all her thoughts as fair within her eyes, \n\nAs bottom agates seen to wave and float \n\nIn crystal currents of clear morning seas. \n\nSo stood that same fair creature at the door. \nThen Lady Psyche, "Ah \xe2\x80\x94 Melissa \xe2\x80\x94 you ! \nYou heard us ?" and Melissa, " O pardon me ! ^^\xc2\xae \n\nI heard, I could not help it, did not wish ; \nBut, dearest Lady, pray you fear me not, \nNor think I bear that heart within my breast, \nTo give three gallant gentlemen to death." \n" I trust you," said the other, " for we two \nWere always friends, none closer, elm and vine ; \nBut yet your mother\'s jealous temperament \xe2\x80\x94 \nLet not your prudence, dearest, drowse, or prove \nThe Danaid of a leaky vase, for fear \n\n304 Her mother\'s color was yellow, while Psyche\'s was lilac. \n\n305 Fair: clear. Bottom agates: agates lying at the bottom of the sea. \n316 Elm and vine. That is, as close as the elm tree and the vine that \n\nclings to it. \n319 Danaid of a leaky vase: one unable to keep a secret. The \nDanaids were the fifty daughters of King Danaus, all but one \nof whom, in obedience to their father\'s command, killed their \nhusbands. The murderesses were punished in Hades for this \ncrime, being condemned forever to try to fill leaky vessels with \nwater. \n\n\n\nPART II 39 \n\nThis whole foundation ruin, and I lose ^^^ \n\nMy honor, these their lives." " Ah, fear me not," \n\nReplied Melissa ; " no \xe2\x80\x94 I would not tell, \n\nNo, not for all Aspasia\'s cleverness. \n\nNo, not to answer, Madam, all those hard things \n\nThat Sheba came to ask of Solomon." \n\n" Be it so," the other, " that we still may lead \n\nThe new light up, and culminate in peace, \n\nFor Solomon may come to Sheba yet." \n\nSaid Cyril, " Madam, he the wisest man \n\nFeasted the woman wisest then, in halls \xc2\xae*\xc2\xae \n\nOf Lebanonian cedar; nor should you \n\n(Tho\', Madam, you should answer, we would ask) \n\nLess welcome find among us, if you came \n\nAmong us, debtors for our lives to you, \n\nMyself for something more." He said not what, \n\nBut " Thanks," she answered, " go : we have been too \n\nlong \nTogether : keep your hoods about the face ; \nThey do so that affect abstraction here. \nSpeak little ; mix not with the rest ; and hold \nYour promise : all, I trust, may yet be well." ^** \n\nWe turn\'d to go, but Cyril took the child. \nAnd held her round the knees against his waist, \nAnd blew the swollen cheek of a trumpeter. \nWhile Psyche watch\'d them, smiling, and the child \n\n323 Aspasia: a Greek woman of the fifth century B. C, famous for her \n\nintellectual strength. \n\n324 Not to answer: not if so doing would enable me to answer \n\n325 Sheba: the Queen of Sheba, a province of Arabia, who paid King \n\nSolomon a visit in order to profit by his wisdom. \n327 Culminate: attain the end for which we are striving. \n\n\n\n40 THE PRINCESS \n\nPush\'d her flat hand against his face and laugh\'d ; \nAnd thus our conference closed. \n\nAnd then we strolled \nFor half the day thro\' stately theaters \nBench\'d crescent-wise. In each we sat, we heard \nThe grave Professor. On the lecture slate \nThe circle rounded under female hands ^^\xc2\xb0 \n\nWith flawless demonstration : follow\'d then \nA classic lecture, rich in sentiment, \nWith scraps of thunderous epic lilted out \nBy violet-hooded Doctors, elegies \nAnd quoted odes, and jewels five- words-long \nThat on the stretch\'d forefinger of all. Time \nSparkle forever : then we dipt in all \nThat treats of whatsoever is, the state, \nThe total chronicles of man, the mind, \nThe morals, something of the frame, the rock, ^\xc2\xae\xc2\xb0 \n\nThe star, the bird, the fish, the shell, the flower. \nElectric, chemic laws, and all the rest, \nAnd whatsoever can be taught and known ; \nTill like three horses that have broken fence, \nAnd glutted all night long breast-deep in corn, \nWe issued gorged with knowledge, and I spoke : \n" Why, Sirs, they do all this as well as we." \n" They hunt old trails," said Cyril, " very well ; \nBut when did woman ever yet invent ?" \n" Ungracious !" answer\'d Florian ; " have you learnt "^" \nNo more from Psyche\'s lecture, you that talk\'d \nThe trash that made me sick, and almost sad?" \n\n\n\n353 Lilted out: declaimed musically. Lilt carries with it the idea of \n\nsinging. \n360 Something of the frame: a little physiology. \n372 Trash. That is, Cyril\'s complimentary speeches to Psyche. \n\n\n\nPART II 41 \n\n" O trash," he said, " but with a kernel in it ! \n\nShould I not call her wise who made me wise ? \n\nAnd learnt ? I learnt more from her in a flash \n\nThan if my brainpan were an empty hull. \n\nAnd every Muse tumbled a science in. \n\nA thousand hearts lie fallow in these halls. \n\nAnd round these halls a thousand baby loves \n\nFly twanging headless arrows at the hearts, "^^ \n\nWhence follows many a vacant pang ; but O \n\nWith me. Sir, enter\'d in the bigger boy, \n\nThe head of all the golden-shafted firm. \n\nThe long-limb\'d lad that had a Psyche too ; \n\nHe cleft me thro\' the stomacher ; and now \n\nWhat think you of it, Florian? do I chase \n\nThe substance or the shadow ? will it hold ? \n\nI have no sorcerer\'s malison on me. \n\nNo ghostly hauntings like his Highness. I \n\nFlatter myself that always everywhere ^^^ \n\nI know the substance when I see it. Well, \n\nAre castles shadows ? Three of them ? Is she \n\nThe sweet proprietress a shadow ? If not. \n\nShall those three castles patch my tatter\'d coat ? \n\nFor dear are those three castles to my wants, \n\nAnd dear is sister Psyche to my heart \n\n\n\n376 Brainpan: skull. \n\n378 Fallow: uncultivated. Frequently used thus figuratively. \n382 The bigger boy: the more mature Cupid [as contrasted with the \n" baby loves "]. \n\n384 Psyche: in classical mythology, a beautful maiden who was be- \xe2\x96\xa0\xe2\x80\xa2 \n\nloved by Cupid. \n\n385 Stomacher: an ornamental covering for the breast; part of a \n\nwoman\'s dress. \n388 Malison: curse. \n392 Castles. See 1. 77, 78, Part I. \n\n\n\n42 THE PRINCESS \n\nAnd two dear things are one of double worth ; \nAnd much I might have said, but that my zone \nUnmann\'d me : then the Doctors ! O to hear \nThe Doctors ! O to watch the thirsty plants \nImbibing ! once or twice I thought to roar, \nTo break my chain, to shake my mane : but thou \nModulate me, soul of mincing mimicry ! \nMake liquid treble of that bassoon, my throat ; \nAbase those eyes that ever loved to meet \nStar-sisters answering under crescent brows ; \nAbate the stride which speaks of man, and loose \nA flying charm of blushes o\'er this cheek. \nWhere they like swallows coming out of time \nWill wonder why they came : but hark the bell \nFor dinner, let us go !" \n\nAnd in we stream\'d \nAmong the columns, pacing staid and still \nBy twos and threes, till all from end to end \nWith beauties every shade of brown and fair \nIn colors gayer than the morning mist, \nThe long hall glitter\'d like a bed of flowers. \nHow might a man not wander from his wits \nPierced thro\' with eyes, but that I kept mine own \nIntent on her, who rapt in glorious dreams. \nThe second-sight of some Astraean age, \nSat compass\'d with professors : they, the while, \nDiscuss\'d a doubt and tost it to and fro : \nA clamor thicken\'d, mixt with inmost terms \n\n\n\n398 Zone: girdle. That is, his woman\'s dress. \n\n420 Astrcpan age. Legend tells us that when the gods ceased to live \namong men Astraea, the goddess of justice, was the last to de- \npart. When the golden age comes she will return to earth. \n\n423 Inmost: intelligible only to the learned. \n\n\n\nPART II 43 \n\nOf art and science : Lady Blanche alone \nOf faded form and haughtiest lineaments, \nWith all her autumn tresses falsely brown, \nShot sidelong daggers at us, a tiger-cat \nIn act to spring. \n\nAt last a solemn grace \nConcluded, and we sought the gardens : there \nOne walk\'d reciting by herself, and one ^^"* \n\nIn this -hand held a volume as to read, \nAnd smoothed a petted peacock down with that : \nSome to a low song oar\'d a shallop by, \nOr under arches of the marble bridge \nHung, shadow\'d from the heat : some hid and sought \nIn the orange thickets : others tost a ball \nAbove the fountain- jets, and back again \nWith laughter : others lay about the lawns. \nOf the older sort, and murmur\'d that their May \nWas passing : what was learning unto them ? **\xc2\xb0 \n\nThey wish\'d to marry ; they could rule a house ; \nMen hated learned women : but we three \nSat muffled like the Fates ; and often came \nMelissa hitting all we saw with shafts \nOf gentle satire, kin to charity, \nThat harm\'d not : then day droopt ; the chapel bells \nCall\'d us : we left the walks ; we mixt with those \nSix hundred maidens clad in purest white, \nBefore two streams of light from wall to wall. \nWhile the great organ almost burst his pipes, *^^ \n\nGroaning for power, and rolling thro\' the court \n\n435 Hid and sought: played hide-and-seek. \n\n443 The Fates: three goddesses \xe2\x80\x94 Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos \xe2\x80\x94 who \nwere supposed to determine the course of human life. Their \noffice was to spin the thread of human destiny, and they were \narmed with shears with which they cut it off when they pleased. \n\n\n\n44 THE PRINCESS \n\nA long melodious thunder to the sound \nOf solemn psalms, and silver litanies, \nThe work of Ida, to call down from Heaven \nA blessing on her labors for the world. \n\n\n\nIll \n\nSweet and low, sweet and low, \n\nWind of the western sea. \nLow, low, breathe and blow, \n\nWind of the western sea! \nOver the rolling waters go, \nCome from the dying moon, and blow, \n\nBlow him again to me; \nWhile my little one, while my pretty one sleeps. \n\nSleep and rest, sleep and rest. \n\nFather will come to thee soon; \nRest, rest, on mother\'s breast, \n\nFather will come to thee soon; \nFathe rwill come to his babe in the nest, \nSilver sails all out of the west \n\nUnder the silver moon: \nSleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep. \n\nMorn in the white wake of the morning star \nCame furrowing all the orient into gold. \nWe rose, and each by other drest with care \nDescended to the court that lay three parts \nIn shadow, but the Muses\' heads were touch\'d \nAbove the darkness from their native East. \n\nThere while we stood beside the fount, and watch\'d \nOr seem\'d to watch the dancing bubble, approach\'d \n\n454 The work of Ida. That is, composed by the Princess. \n\n\n\nPART III 45 \n\nMelissa, tinged with wan from lack of sleep, \n\nOr grief, and glowing round her dewy eyes \'\' ^^ \n\nThe circled Iris of a night of tears ; \n\n"And fly," she cried, " O fly, while yet you may ! \n\nMy mother knows " : and when I ask\'d her " how," \n\n" My fault," she wept, " my fault ! and yet not mine ; \n\nYet mine in part. O hear me, pardon me ! \n\nMy mother, \'tis her wont from night to night \n\nTo rail at Lady Psyche and her side. \n\nShe says the Princess should have been the Head, \n\nHerself and Lady Psyche the two arms ; \n\nAnd so it was agreed when first they came ; -** \n\nBut Lady Psyche was the right hand now, \n\nAnd she the left, or not or seldom used ; \n\nHers more than half the students, all the love. \n\nAnd so last night she fell to canvass you : \n\nHer countrywomen ! she did not envy her. \n\n* Who ever saw such wild barbarians ? \n\nGirls ? \xe2\x80\x94 more like men ! \' and at these words the snake, \n\nMy secret, seem\'d to stir within my breast ; \n\nAnd O, Sirs, could I help it, but my cheek \n\nBegan to burn and burn, and her lynx eye ^\'^ \n\nTo fix and make me hotter, till she laugh \'d : \n\n* O marvelously modest maiden, you ! \n\nMen ! girls, like men ! why, if they had been men \nYou need not set your thoughts in rubric thus \nFor wholesale comment,\' Pardon, I am shamed \nThat I must needs repeat for my excuse \n\n9 Wan: paleness. \n\n11 Iris: here, dark rings under the eyes. \n24 Fell to canvass: came to examine or scrutinize. \n34 In rubric: in red. That is, like certain words in old books, which \n\nwere put in red to make them more conspicuous. The mother \n\nis referring, of course, to the girl\'s blushes. \n\n\n\n46 THE PRINCESS \n\nWhat looks so little graceful: * men \' (for still \n\nMy mother went revolving on the word) \n\n\'And so they are, \xe2\x80\x94 very like men indeed \xe2\x80\x94 \n\nAnd with that woman closeted for hours !\' *** \n\nThen came these dreadful words out one by one, \n\n\' Why \xe2\x80\x94 ^these \xe2\x80\x94 are \xe2\x80\x94 men* : I shudder\'d : \'and you \n\nknow it.\' \n* O ask me nothing/ I said : *And she knows too, \nAnd she conceals it.\' So my mother clutch\'d \nThe truth at once, but with no word from me ; \nAnd now thus early risen she goes to inform \nThe Princess : Lady Psyche will be crush\'d ; \nBut you may yet be saved, and therefore fly : \nBut heal me with your pardon ere you go." \n\n" What pardon, sweet Melissa, for a blush? " ^^ \n\nSaid Cyril : " Pale one, blush again ; than wear \nThose lilies, better blush our lives away. \nYet let us breathe for one hour more in Heaven," \nHe added, " lest some classic Angel speak \nIn scorn of us, \' They mounted, Ganymedes, \nTo tumble, Vulcans, on the second morn.\' \nBut I will melt this marble into wax \nTo yield us farther furlough " : and he went. \n\n\n\nMelissa shook her doubtful curls, and thought \nHe scarce would prosper. " Tell us," Florian ask\'d, \n\n\n\n60 \n\n\n\n37 What looks, etc. She refers to her blushes. \n\n55 Ganymedes. Ganymede, the most beautiful of mortal men, according \n\nto Greek mythology, was taken up to Olympus, to serve as cup- \nbearer at the feasts of the Gods. \n\n56 Vulcans. Vulcan, the god of fire, having offended Jupiter, was cast \n\nout of Olympus. \n59 Shook her doubtful curls. That is, doubtfully shook her curly head. \n\n\n\nPART III 47 \n\n" How grew this feud betwixt the right and left." \n\n" O long ago," she said, \'\'betwixt these two \n\nDivision smolders hidden ; \'t is my mother, \n\nToo jealous, often fretful as the wind \n\nPent in a crevice : much I bear with her : \n\nI never knew my father, but she says \n\n(God help her!) she was wedded to a fool; \n\nAnd still she rail\'d against the state of things. \n\nShe had the care of Lady Ida\'s youth. \n\nAnd from the Queen\'s decease she brought her up. \'^^ \n\nBut when your sister came she won the heart \n\nOf Ida: they were still together, grew \n\n(For so they said themselves) inosculated; \n\nConsonant chords that shiver to one note ; \n\nOne mind in all things : yet my mother still \n\nAffirms your Psyche thieved her theories, \n\nAnd angled with them for her pupil\'s love : \n\nShe calls her plagiarist ; I know not what : \n\nBut I must go ; I dare not tarry," and light. \n\nAs flies the shadow of a bird, she fled. \xc2\xae\xc2\xb0 \n\nThen murmured Florian, gazing after her: \n"An open-hearted maiden, true and pure. \nIf I could love, why this were she : how pretty \nHer blushing was, and how she blush\'d again. \nAs if to close with Cyril\'s random wish ! \nNot like your Princess cramm\'d with erring pride. \nNor like poor Psyche whom she drags in tow." \n\n" The crane," I said, " may chatter of the crane, \nThe dove may murmur of the dove, but I \n\n73 Inosculated: united intimately. \n\n74 Consonant: harmonizing. Shiver: vibrate. \n\n\n\n48 THE PRINCESS \n\nAn eagle clang an eagle to the sphere. *\xc2\xae \n\nMy princess, O my princess ! true she errs, \n\nBut in her own grand way ; being herself \n\nThree times more noble than three score of men, \n\nShe sees herself in every woman else, \n\nAnd so she wears her error like a crown \n\nTo blind the truth and me : for her, and her, \n\nHebes are they to hand ambrosia, mix \n\nThe nectar ; but \xe2\x80\x94 ah, she \xe2\x80\x94 whene\'er she moves \n\nThe Samian Here rises, and she speaks \n\nA Memnon smitten with the morning sun.\'\' ^^ \n\nSo saying from the court we paced," and gain\'d \nThe terrace ranged along the northern front, \nAnd leaning there on those balusters, high \nAbove the empurpled champaign, drank the gale \nThat blown about the foliage underneath, \nAnd sated with the innumerable rose. \nBeat balm upon our eyelids. Hither came \nCyril, and yawning " O hard task," he cried : \n" No fighting shadows here ! I forced a way \n\n\n\n90 Clang is here used transitively. Sphere: upper air. \n\n96 For her, and her: as for Psyche and Melissa. \n\n97 Hebes. In Grecian mythology Hebe was the goddess who personi- \n\nfied youth, and whose office it was to fill the cups of the gods \nwith nectar. \n99 Samian Here. Here or Hera was the wife of Zeus, chief of the \nGreek gods. The island of Samos was a favorite resort of hers. \n100 Memnon: a colossal statue near Thebes, which was believed by \nthe Greeks to be that of Memnon, a hero of the Trojan War. \nWhen the first rays of the sun fell on it in the morning, this \nstatue emitted a peculiar twanging noise, which caused it to be \ncelebrated as having vocal powers. \n\n103 Balusters. Accent on second syllable. \n\n104 Champaign: open country. \n\n106 Sated with the innumerable rose: laden with the scent of the in- \nnumerable roses in the gardens below. \n\n\n\nPART III 49 \n\nThro\' solid opposition crabb\'d and gnarl\'d. *^\xc2\xae \n\nBetter to clear prime forests, heave and thump \n\nA league of street in summer solstice down, \n\nThen hammer at this reverend gentlewoman. \n\nI knock\'d and, bidden, enter\'d ; found her there \n\nAt point to move, and settled in her eyes \n\nThe green malignant light of coming storm. \n\nSir, I was courteous, every phrase well-oil\'d, \n\nAs man\'s could be ; yet maiden-meek I pray\'d \n\nConcealment : she demanded who we were, \n\nAnd why we came ? I fabled nothing fair, "\xc2\xae \n\nBut, your example pilot, told her all. \n\nUp went the hush\'d amaze of hand and eye. \n\nBut when I dwelt upon your old affiance. \n\nShe answered sharply that I talk\'d astray. \n\nI urged the fierce inscription on the gate, \n\nAnd our three lives. True \xe2\x80\x94 we had limed ourselves \n\nWith open eyes, and we must take the chance. \n\nBut such extremes, I told her, well might harm \n\nThe woman\'s cause. \' Not more than now,\' she said, \n\n* So puddled as it is with favoritism.\' ^^^ \n\nI tried the mother\'s heart. Shame might befall \n\nMelissa, knowing, saying not she knew : \n\nHer answer was, * Leave me to deal with that.\' \n\nI spoke of war to come and many deaths, \n\n111 Prime: primeval. \n\n115 At point to move: on the point of moving, [i. e., of taking steps \n\nto punish Psyche by revealing the deception practiced upon the \n\nPrincess]. \n\n120 Fabled nothing fair: invented no deceptive stories. \n\n121 Your example pilot: following your example. \n\n122 Up went the hush\'d amaze, etc. That is, she raised her hands and \n\ncast up her eyes in amazement, saying nothing. \n126 Limed ourselves: walked into a trap. In olden times birds were \ntrapped by means of a sticky substance called bird-lime, which \nwas spread on branches upon which they were likely to alight. \n\n\n\n50 THE PRINCESS \n\nAnd she replied, her duty was to speak, \n\nAnd duty duty, clear of consequences. \n\nI grew discouraged, Sir ; but since I knew \n\nNo rock so hard but that a little wave \n\nMay beat admission in a thousand years, \n\nI recommenced : \' Decide not ere you pause. ^** \n\nI find you here but in the second place. \n\nSome say the third \xe2\x80\x94 the authentic foundress you. \n\nI offer boldly : we will seat you highest : \n\nWink at our advent ; help my prince to gain \n\nHis rightful bride, and here I promise you \n\nSome palace in our land, where you shall reign \n\nThe head and heart of all our fair she-world. \n\nAnd your great name flow on with broadening time \n\nFor ever.\' Well, she balanced this a little, \n\nAnd told me she would answer us to-day, ^\'^^ \n\nMeantime be mute: thus much, nor more I gain\'d." \n\nHe ceasing, came a message from the Head. \n" That afternoon the Princess rode to take \nThe dip of certain strata to the North. \nWould we go with her ? we should find the land \nWorth seeing; and the river made a fall \nOut yonder " : then she pointed on to where \nA double hill ran up his furrowy forks \nBeyond the thick-leaved platans of the vale. \n\nAgreed to, this, the day fled on thro\' all *\xc2\xae* \n\nIts range of duties to the appointed hour. \nThen summoned to the porch we went. She stood \n\n144 Wink at: pretend ignorance of; connive at. \n\n154 The dip: the angle of inclination of layers, or strata, of earth or \n\nrock. Students of geology are taught to ascertain such angles. \n159 Platans: plane trees. \n\n\n\nPART III 51 \n\nAmong her maidens, higher by the head, \n\nHer back against a pillar, her foot on one \n\nOf those tame leopards. Kittenlike he roll\'d \n\nAnd paw\'d about her sandal. I drew near ; \n\nI gazed. On a sudden m}^ strange seizure came \n\nUpon me, the weird vision of our house : \n\nThe Princess Ida seem\'d a hollow show, \n\nHer gay-furr\'d cats a painted fantasy, ^^\xc2\xae \n\nHer college and her maidens empty masks, \n\nAnd I myself the shadow of a dream. \n\nFor all things were and were not. Yet I felt \n\nMy heart beat thick with passion and with awe ; \n\nThen from my breast the involuntary sigh \n\nBrake, as she smote me with the light of eyes \n\nThat lent my knee desire to kneel, and shook \n\nMy pulses, till to horse we got, and so \n\nWent forth in long retinue following up \n\nThe river as it narrow\'d to the hills. ^^^ \n\nI rode beside her and to me she said : \n" O friend, we trust that you esteem\'d us not \nToo harsh to your companion yestermorn ; \nUnwillingly we spake." \'\' No \xe2\x80\x94 not to her." \nI answer\'d, " but to one of whom we spake \nYour Highness might have seem\'d the thing you say." \n"Again ?" she cried, " are you ambassadresses \nFrom him to me? we give you, being strange, \nA license : speak, and let the topic die." \n\nI stammer\'d that I knew him \xe2\x80\x94 could have wish\'d \xe2\x80\x94 ^^^ \n" Our king expects \xe2\x80\x94 was there no precontract ? \nThere is no truer-hearted \xe2\x80\x94 ah, you seem \n\n179 Retinue. Accent on second syllable \n\n\n\n52 THE PRINCESS \n\nAll he prefigured, and he could not see \nThe bird of passage flying south but long\'d \nTo follow: surely, if your Highness keep \nYour purport, you will shock him even to death, \nOr baser courses, children of despair." \n\n" Poor boy," she said, " can he not read \xe2\x80\x94 no books ? \nQuoit, tennis, ball \xe2\x80\x94 no games ? nor deals in that \nWhich men delight in, martial exercise ? "\xc2\xb0\xc2\xb0 \n\nTo nurse a blind ideal like a girl, \nMethinks he seems no better than a girl ; \nAs girls were once, as we ourself have been : \nWe had our dreams ; perhaps he mixt with them : \nWe touch on our dead self, nor shun to do it, \nBeing other \xe2\x80\x94 since we learnt our meaning here. \nTo lift the woman\'s fallen divinity \nUpon an even pedestal with man." \n\nShe paused, and added with a haughtier smile, \n"And as to precontracts, we move, my friend, ^*** \n\nAt no man\'s beck, but know ourself and thee, \n\nVashti, noble Vashti ! Summon\'d out \n\nShe kept her state, and left the drunken king \nTo brawl at Shushan underneath the palms." \n\n"Alas, your Highness breathes full East," I said, \n" On that which leans to you ! I know the Prince, \n\n1 prize his truth : and then how vast a work \n\n\n\n212 Vashti: the queen of King Ahasueras, who commanded her to ap- \npear before his court, that all might see her great beauty. She \nrefused and was deposed, Esther being made queen in her place. \n\n214 Shushan: the ancient capital of Persia. \n\n215 Breathes full East: shows the same proud spirit shown by the \n\neastern queen. \n\n\n\nPART III 53 \n\nTo assail this gray pre-eminence of man ! \n\nYou grant me license; might I use it? think; \n\nEre half be done perchance your life may fail ; --\'* \n\nThen comes the feebler heiress of your plan, \n\nAnd takes and ruins all ; and thus your pains \n\nMay only make that footprint upon sand \n\nWhich old-recurring waves of prejudice \n\nResmooth to nothing : might I dread that you, \n\nWith only Fame for spouse and your great deeds \n\nFor issue, yet may live in vain, and miss \n\nMeanwhile what every woman counts her due. \n\nLove, children, happiness ?" \n\nAnd she exclaim\'d, \n" Peace, you young savage of the Northern wild ! -^^ \nWhat ! tho\' your Prince\'s love were like a God\'s. \nPlave we not made ourself the sacrifice? \nYou are bold indeed : we are not talk\'d to thus : \nYet will we say for children, would they grew \nLike field-flowers everywhere ! we like them well : \nBut children die ; and let me tell you, girl, \nHowe\'er you babble, great deeds cannot die ; \nThey with the sun and moon renew their light \nFor ever, blessing those that look on them. \nChildren \xe2\x80\x94 that men may pluck them from our hearts, ^^^ \nKill us with pity, break us with ourselves \xe2\x80\x94 \nO \xe2\x80\x94 children \xe2\x80\x94 there is nothing upon earth \nMore miserable than she that has a son \nAnd sees him err : nor would we work for fame ; \nTho^ she perhaps might reap the applause of Great, \nWho learns the one pou sto whence after-hands \n\n218 Gray: ancient. \n\n246 The one pott sto. The Princess has in mind the saying of Archi- \nmedes, a noted Greek mathematician : " Give me where I may \nstand [a place to stand on] and I will move the world." \n\n\n\n54 THE PRINCESS \n\nMay move the world, tho\' she herself effect \n\nBut little: wherefore up and act, nor shrink \n\nFor fear our solid aim be dissipated \n\nBy frail successors. Would, indeed, we had been, ^-^^ \n\nIn lieu of many mortal flies, a race \n\nOf giants living each a thousand years, \n\nThat we might see our own work out, and watch \n\nThe sandy footprint harden into stone." \n\nI answered nothing, doubtful in myself \nIf that strange poet-princess with her grand \nImaginations might at all be won. \nAnd she broke out interpreting my thoughts : \n\n" No doubt we seem a kind of monster to you ; \nWe are used to that : for women, up till this -^^ \n\nCramp \'d under worse than South-sea-isle taboo, \nDwarfs of the gynaeceum, fail so far \nIn high desire, they know not, cannot guess \nHow much their welfare is a passion to us. \nIf we could give them surer, quicker proof \xe2\x80\x94 \nO if our end were less achievable \nBy slow approaches than by single act \nOf immolation, any phase of death, \nWe were as prompt to spring against the pikses, \n\n\n\n261 Taboo: the setting apart either as sacred or as forbidden [according \n\nto a custom of the Polynesians and other races of the South \nPacific] \n\n262 Gynsceum: that part of a Greek dwelling occupied by the women. \n269 Spring against the pikes. At the battle of Sempach (1386), in \n\nwhich fourteen hundred Swiss routed four thousand Austrians, \nthe Swiss patriot Arnold von Winkelried rushed up to the \nenemy\'s line, and grasping as many spears as possible in his \narms, forced them into his own breast, thus making a break \nthrough which his comrades could pass. \n\n\n\nPART III 55 \n\nOr down the fiery gulf as talk of it. ^^" \n\nTo compass our dear sisters\' liberties." \n\nShe bow\'d as if to veil a noble tear ; \nAnd up we came to where the river sloped \nTo plunge in cataract, shattering on black blocks \nA breath of thunder. O\'er it shook the woods, \nAnd danced the color, and, below, stuck out \nThe bones of some vas<- bulk that lived and roar\'d \nBefore man was. She gazed awhile and said, \n" As these rude bones to us, are we to her \nThat will be." " Dare we dream of that," I ask\'d, -""^ \n" Which wrought us, as the workman and his work, \nThat practice betters ? " " How," she cried, " you love \nThe metaphysics ! read and earn our prize, \nA golden brooch : beneath an emerald plane \nSits Diotima, teaching him that died \nOf hemlock ; our device ; wrought to the life ; \nShe rapt upon icr subject, he on her: \nFor there are schools for all." "And yet,\'\' I said, \n" Methinks I have not found among them all \nOne anatomic." " Nay, we thought of that," \'^^ \n\nShe answered, " but it pleased us not : in truth \nWe shudder but to dream our maids should ape \n\n270 The \xc2\xa3ery gulf. About 3 GO B. C. a great crack in the ground \nappeared in the Roman Forum. It was declared by the sooth- \nsayers that only the sacrifice of a life would cause it to close. \nThereupon Marcus Curtius rode his horse into the abyss, which \nimmediately closed up, \n\n277 Some vast bulk: some prehistoric monster. \n\n280-282 Dare we dream, etc. That is, dare we consider the Creator \nan ordinary workman, whose skill increases with practice? \n\n285 Diotima: a priestess of Mantinea, noted for her wisdom and as \nhaving instructed the Greek philosopher Socrates, who was con- \ndemned to die by drinking poison. \n\n288 Schools: courses of study in a university. \n\n290 One anatomic. See 1. 360, Part II. \n\n\n\n56 THE PRINCESS \n\nThose monstrous males that carve the living hound, \n\nAnd cram him with the fragments of the grave, \n\nOr in the dark dissolving human heart, \n\nAnd holy secrets of this microcosm, \n\nDabbling a shameless hand with shameful jest, \n\nEncarnalize their spirits : yet we know \n\nKnowledge is knowledge, and this matter hangs : \n\nHowbeit ourself, foreseeing casualty, ^\xc2\xb0\xc2\xae \n\nNor willing men should come among us, learnt, \n\nFor many weary moons before we came. \n\nThis craft of healing. Were you sick, ourself \n\nWould tend upon you. To your question now, \n\nWhich touches on the workman and hi\xc2\xa7 work. \n\nLet there be light and there was light : \'t is so : \n\nFor was, and is, and will be, are but is ; \n\nAnd all creation is one act at once, \n\nThe birth of light: but we that are not all, \n\nAs parts, can see but parts, now this, now that, ^^^ \n\nAnd live, perforce, from thought to thought, and make \n\nOne act a phantom of succession : thus \n\nOur weakness somehow shapes the shadow. Time ; \n\nBut in the shadow will we work and mold \n\nThe woman to the fuller day." \n\nShe spake \nWith kindled eyes : we rode a league beyond. \nAnd, o\'er a bridge of pinewood crossing, came \nOn flowery levels underneath the crag, \nFull of all beauty. " O how sweet," I said \n(For I was half-oblivious of my mask), "* \n\n293 Carve the living hound: practice vivisection, \n\n294 Cram him, etc. That is, inoculate him with disease germs, \n\n296 Microcosm: a little world; hence, a man. Applied here to the \n\nhuman body. \n298 Encarnalise: brutalize. 2-99 Hangs: awaits decision. \n\n\n\nPART III 57 \n\n" To linger here with one that loved us !" " Yea," \n\nShe ansvver\'d, " or with fair philosophies \n\nThat lift the fancy ; for indeed these fields \n\nAre lovely, lovelier not the Elysian lawns, \n\nWhere paced the Demigods of old, and saw \n\nThe soft white vapor streak the crowned towers \n\nBuilt to the Sun" : then, turning to her maids, \n\n" Pitch our pavilion here upon the sward ; \n\nLay out the viands." At the word, they raised \n\nA tent of satin, elaborately wrought ^^\xc2\xae \n\nWith fair Corinna\'s triumph ; here she stood. \n\nEngirt with many a florid maiden-cheek. \n\nThe woman-conqueror ; woman-conquer \'d there \n\nThe bearded Victor of ten-thousand hymns, \n\nAnd all the men mourn\'d at his side : but we \n\nSet forth to climb ; then, climbing, Cyril kept \n\nWith Psyche, with Melissa Florian, I \n\nWith mine afiianced. Many a little hand \n\nGlanced like a touch of sunshine on the rocks, \n\nMany a light foot shone like a jewel set ^\'^^ \n\nIn the dark crag : and then we turn\'d, we wound \n\nAbout the clififs, the copses, out and in. \n\nHammering and clinking, chattering stony names \n\nOf shale and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff, \n\nAmygdaloid and trachyte, till the sun \n\nGrew broader toward his death and fell, and all \n\nThe rosy heights came out above the lawns. \n\n324 Elysian lawns: lawns of Elysium. \n\n327 Built to the sun: rising toward the sky. \n\n331 Fair Corinna\'s triumph. Corinna was a lyric poetess of Greece \nwho flourished about 500 B. C. She was famous for her \nbeauty and also for her five victories over Pindar, the celebrated \nTheban poet, with whom she competed in certain poetical con- \ntests. \n\n343 Hammering. They were collecting mineralogical specimens. \n\n\n\n58 THE PRINCESS \n\n\n\nIV \n\n\n\nThe splendor falls on castle walls \n\nAnd snowy summits old in story; \nThe long light shakes across the lakes, \nAnd the wild cataract leaps in glory. \nBlow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, \nBlow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. \n\nO hark, O hear! how thin and clear. \nAnd thinner, clearer, farther going! \nO sweet and far from clifif and scar \nThe horns of Elfland faintly blowing! \nBlow, let us hear the purple glens replying: \nBlow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. \n\nO love, they die in yon rich sky. \n\nThey faint on hill or field or river; \nOur echoes roll from soul to soul, \nAnd grow for ever and for ever. \nBlow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying. \nAnd answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. \n\n" There sinks the nebulous star we call the sun. \nIf that hypothesis of theirs be sound," \nSaid Ida ; " let us down and rest " ; and we \nDown from the lean and wrinkled precipices. \nBy every coppice-feather\'d chasm and cleft, \nDropt thro\' the ambrosial gloom to where below \nNo bigger than a glowworm shone the tent \nLamp-lit from the inner. Once she lean\'d on me, \n\nSong. Scar: steep, rocky height. \n\n2 That hypothesis: the nebular hypothesis of LaPlace. See 1. 101 \n104, Part II. \n\n5 Coppice-feather\'d : lightly fringed with foliage. \n\n6 Ambrosial gloom. Cf. 1. 87, Prologue. \n8 The inner: within. \n\n\n\nPART IV 59 \n\nDescending; once or twice she lent her hand, \n\nAnd blissful palpitations in the blood *** \n\nStirring a sudden transport rose and fell. \n\nBut when we planted level feet, and dipt \nBeneath the satin dome and enter\'d in, \nThere leaning deep in broider\'d down we sank \nOur elbows ; on a tripod in the midst \nA fragrant flame rose, and before us glow\'d \nFruit, blossom, viand, amber wine, and gold. \n\nThen she, " Let some one sing to us ; lightlier move \nThe minutes fledged with music " : and a maid, \nOf those beside her, smote her harp and sang. ^^ \n\n" Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, \nTears from the depth of some divine despair \nRise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, \nIn looking on the happy autumn-fields, \nAnd thinking of the days that are no more. \n\n" Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, \n\nThat brings our friends up from the underworld. \n\nSad as the last which reddens over one \n\nThat sinks with all we love below the verge; \n\nSo sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. so \n\n" Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns \n\nThe earliest pipe of half-waken\'d birds \n\nTo dying ears, when unto dying eyes \n\nThe casement slowly grows a glimmering square; \n\nSo sad, so strange, the days that are no more. \n\n12 Planted level feet: reached level ground. \n12, 13 Dipt Beneath the satin dome, etc.: entered the tent. \n14 Broider\'d down. That is, soft cushions covered witli embroidery. \n17 Gold. That is, possibly, golden wine, but more probably vessels of \ngold. \n\n\n\n60 THE PRINCESS \n\n" Dear as remember\'d kisses after death, \n\nAnd sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign\'d \n\nOn lips that are for others; deep as love, \n\nDeep as first love, and wild with all regret; \n\nO Death in Life, the days that are no more." ^o \n\nShe ended with such passion that the tear \nShe sang of shook and fell, an erring pearl \nLost in her bosom : but with some disdain \nAnswer\'d the Princess, " If indeed there haunt \nAbout the molder\'d lodges of the past \nSo sweet a voice and vague, fatal to men, \nWell needs it we should cram our ears with wool \nAnd so pace by : but thine are fancies hatch\'d \nIn silken-folded idleness ; nor is it \nWiser to weep a true occasion lost ""^ \n\nBut trim our sails, and let old bygones be. \nWhile down the streams that float us each and all \nTo the issue, goes, like glittering bergs of ice, \nThrone after throne, and molten on the waste \nBecomes a cloud : for all things serve their time \nToward that great year of equal mights and rights. \nNor would I fight with iron laws, in the end \nFound golden : let the past be past : let be \nTheir cancel\'d Babels: tho\' the rough kex break \nThe starr\'d mosaic, and the beard-blown goat ^"^ \n\n45 Moldered lodges: old dwellings thought of figuratively as tlie in- \nsufficient shelter of old thoughts. \n\n47 Cram our ears with wool. The Princess probably has in mind the \nstory of how Ulysses, before passing the island of the Sirens, \nput wax into the ears of his sailors, so that they might not hear \nthe fatal song. (See note for 1. 181, Part II.) \n\n59 Babels. See first part of note for 1. 466, Part IV. Kex: hemlock, \nhere, wild growth of any sort. \n\n60, 61 The beard-blown goat, etc. Tennyson, in a letter to Dawson, \nexplains that this " involves a sense of the wind blowing the \nbeard on the height of the ruined pillar." \n\n\n\nPART IV 61 \n\nHang on the shaft, and the wild fig-tree split \nTheir monstrous idols, care not while we hear \nA trumpet in the distance pealing news \nOf better, and Hope, a poising eagle, burns \nAbove the unrisen morrow " : then to me, \n" Know you no song of your own land," she said, \n" Not such as moans about the retrospect. \nBut deals with the other distance and the hues \nOf promise; not a death\'s-head at the wine?" \n\nThen I remember\'d one myself had made, ^" \n\nWhat time I watch\'d the swallow winging south \nFrom mine own land, part made long since, and part \nNow while I sang, and maidenlike as far \nAs I could ape their treble did I sing. \n\n" O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying south, \nFly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves, \nAnd tell her, tell her, what I tell to thee. \n\n" O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each. \nThat bright and fierce and fickle is the South, \nAnd dark and true and tender is the North. so \n\n" O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light \nUpon her lattice, I would pipe and trill, \nAnd cheep and twitter twenty million loves. \n\n" O were I thou that she might take me in, \nAnd lay me on her bosom, and her heart \nWould rock the snowy cradle till I died. \n\n64 Burns: casts its glow, \n\n67 The retrospect: the past. \n\n68 The other distance: the future. \n\n69 Death\'s-head. The Egyptians used to have at their banquets the \n\nwooden image of a corpse, to remind them that death was \ninevitable. \n\n\n\n62 THE PRINCESS \n\n" Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love, \nDelaying as the tender ash delays \nTo clothe herself, when all the woods are green? \n\n"O tell her, Swallow, that thy brood is flown; \xc2\xbbo \n\nSay to her, I do but wanton in the South, \nBut in the North long since my nest is made. \n\n" O tell her, brief is life but love is long, \nAnd brief the sun of summer in the North, \nAnd brief the moon of beauty in the South. \n\n" O Swallow, flying from the golden woods, \nFly to her, and pipe and woo her, and make her mine, \nAnd tell her, tell her, that I follow thee." \n\nI ceased, and all the ladies, each at each, \nLike the Ithacensian suitors in old time, *\xc2\xb0^ \n\nStared with great eyes, and laugh\'d with alien lips, \nAnd knew not what they meant ; for still my voice \nRang false : but smiling, " Not for thee," she said, \n" O Bulbul, any rose of Gulistan. \nShall burst her veil ; marsh-divers, rather, maid, \nShall croak thee sister, or the meadow-crake \nGrate her harsh kindred in the grass : and this \n\n100-102 Ithacensian suitors: the hundred suitors of Penelope, wife \nof Ulysses, whom the hero found in possession of his palace \nupon his return to Ithaca after an absence of twenty years. \nThey did not recognize him, for he was disguised as a beggar, \nbut while they laughed scornfully at him, it was as though \nthey laughed " with other men\'s jaws," for they themselves did \nnot understand their mirth; and at the same time they were \nfilled with forebodings. \n\n104 Bulbul. "The Persian name of the nightingale, whose love for \nthe rose is a favorite theme with Saadi [a Persian poet of the \nthirteenth century] and his brother poets. Gulistan is Persian \nof rose-garden, and Saadi takes it as the title of his book of \npoems." \xe2\x80\x94 RoLFE. \n\n105, 106 Marsh-divers . . . or the meadow- crake. Both of these birds \nhave a very harsh note. \n\n\n\nPART IV 63 \n\nA mere love-poem! O for such, my friend, \n\nWe hold them slight ; they mind us of the time \n\nWhen we made bricks in Egypt. Knaves are men, "* \n\nThat lute and flute fantastic tenderness, \n\nAnd dress the victim to the offering up, \n\nAnd paint the gates of Hell with Paradise, \n\nAnd play the slave to gain the tyranny. \n\nPoor soul ! I had a maid of honor once \xe2\x80\xa2, \n\nShe wept her true eyes blind for such a one, \n\nA rogue of canzonets and serenades. \n\nI loved her. Peace be with her. She is dead. \n\nSo they blaspheme the muse ! But great is song \n\nUsed to great ends : ourself have often tried ^^^ \n\nValkyrian hymns, or into rhythm have dash\'d \n\nThe passion of the prophetess ; for song \n\nIs duer unto freedom, force and growth \n\nOf spirit, than to junketing and love. \n\nLove is it ? Would this same mock-love, and this \n\nMock-Hymen were laid up like winter bats, \n\nTill all men grew to rate us at our worth, \n\nNot vassals to be beat, nor pretty babes \n\nTo be dandled, no, but living wills, and sphered \n\nWhole in ourselves and owed to none. Enough ! ^^<* \n\nBut now to leaven play with profit, you. \n\nKnow you no song, the true growth of your soil, \n\nThat gives the manners of your countrywomen ? " \n\n110 Made bricks in Egypt. That is, were still in slavery, like the \nHebrews in Egypt. \n\n117 Canzonets: short, light songs. \n\n121 Valkyrian hymns: songs such as the Valkyrs might have com- \nposed. The Valkyrs were warrior-maidens who assisted Odin, \nthe Norse All-father and god of war, one of their duties be- \ning to carry to Valhalla the heroes slain in battle. \n\n126 Mock-Hymen. In classical mythology Hymen was the god of \nmarriage. \n\n129 Sphered: centered. \n\n\n\n64 THE PRINCESS \n\nShe spoke and turn\'d her sumptuous head with eyes \nOf shining expectation fixt on mine. \nThen while I dragg\'d my brains for such a song, \nCyril, with whom the bell-mouth\'d glass had wrought, \nOr master\'d by the sense of sport, began \nTo troll a careless, careless tavern-catch \nOf Moll and Meg, and strange experiences ^*\xc2\xb0 \n\nUnmeet for ladies. Florian nodded at him, \nI frowning ; Psyche flush\'d and wann\'d and shook ; \nThe lilylike Melissa droop\'d her brows ; \n"Forbear," the Princess cried; "Forbear, Sir," I; \nAnd heated thro\' and thro\' with wrath and love, \nI smote him on the breast ; he started up ; \nThere rose a shriek as of a city sack\'d ; \nMelissa clamor\'d, " Flee the death " ; " To horse !" \nSaid Ida ; " home ! to horse !" and fled, as flies \nA troop of snowy doves athwart the dusk, ^^^ \n\nWhen some one batters at the dovecote doors, \nDisorderly the women. Alone I stood \nWith Florian, cursing Cyril, vext at heart, \nIn the pavilion: there like parting hopes \nI heard them passing from me : hoof by hoof, \nAnd every hoof a knell to my desires, \nClang\'d on the bridge ; and then another shriek, \n" The Head, the Head, the Princess, O the Head!" \nFor blind with rage she miss\'d the plank, and roll\'d \nIn the river. Out I sprang from glow to gloom : ^^"^ \nThere whirl\'d her white robe like a blossom\'d branch \nRapt to the horrible fall : a glance I gave, \n\n\n\n137 With whom, etc; who was affected by the wine he had drunk, \n160 From glow to gloom: from the light of the tent into the darkness \n\noutside. \n162 Rapt to the horrible fall: hurried toward the falls in the river. \n\n\n\nPART IV 65 \n\nNo more ; but woman-vested as I was \n\nPlunged ; and the flood drew ; yet I caught her ; then \n\nOaring one arm, and bearing in my left \n\nThe weight of all the hopes of half the world, \n\nStrove to buffet to land in vain. A tree \n\nWas half-disrooted from his place and stoop\'d \n\nTo drench his dark locks in the gurgling wave \n\nMid-channel. Right on this we drove and caught, ^\'\xc2\xb0 \n\nAnd grasping down the boughs I gain\'d the shore. \n\nThere stood her maidens glimmeringly group\'d \nIn the hollow bank. One reaching forward drew \nMy burthen from mine arms ; they cried, " She lives " : \nThey bore her back into the tent : but I, \nSo much a kind of shame within me wrought, \nNot yet endured to meet her opening eyes. \nNor found my friends ; but push\'d alone on foot \n(For since her horse was lost I left her mine) \nAcross the woods, and less from Indian craft ^^^ \n\nThan beelike instinct hiveward, found at length \nThe garden portals. Two great statues, Art \nAnd Science, Caryatids, lifted up \nA weight of emblem, and betwixt were valves \nOf open-work in which the hunter rued \nHis rash intrusion, manlike, but his brows \nHad sprouted, and the branches thereupon \nSpread out at top, and grimly spiked the gates. \n\n\n\n183 Caryatids: female figures in stone serving as supports. \n\n|184 Valves: folding gates. \n\n\'185, 186 In which the hunter, etc. On the gates Actaeon was depicted, \nundergoing the change from man to stag which was the punish- \nment meted out to him by the goddess Diana for having chanced \nupon her when .she was bathing. \n\n\n\n66 THE PRINCESS \n\nA little space was left between the hofiio. \nThro\' which I clamber\'d o\'er at top with pain, ^^ \n\nDropt on the sward, and up the linden walks, \nAnd, tost on thoughts that changed from hue to hue, \nNow poring on the glowworm, now the star, \nI paced the terrace, till the Bear had wheel\'d \nThro\' a great arc his seven slow suns. \n\nA step \nOf lightest echo, then a loftier form \nThan female, moving thro\' the uncertain gloom, \nDisturb\'d me with the doubt " if this were she," \nBut it was Florian. " Hist, O hist !" he said, \n" They seek us ; out so late is out of rules. ^" \n\nMoreover, * Seize the strangers \' is the cry. \nHow came you here ?" I told him : " I," said he, \n" Last of the train, a moral leper, I, \nTo whom none spake, half-sick at heart, return\'d. \nArriving all confused among the rest \nWith hooded brows I crept into the hall, \nAnd, couch\'d behind a Judith, underneath \nThe head of Holofernes peep\'d and saw. \nGirl after girl was call\'d to trial : each \nDisclaimed all knowledge of us : last of all, ^^\xc2\xb0 \n\nMelissa : trust me. Sir, I pitied her. \n\n\n\n194 The Bear: the constellation Ursa Major. \n\n195 His seven slow suns: the seven stars of the Dipper. \n\n200 Out of rules. In the English universities the students are re- \nquired to be inside the gates by a certain hour at night. \n\n203 A moral leper: one who because of his baseness is shunned by all \nas though he were a leper. \n\n207 Judith: a Jewish heroine who, when her native town was being \nbesieged by the hosts of Nebuchadnezzar, made her way to the \nhostile camp and into the tent of Holofernes, the Assyrian gen- \neral, beheaded him, and carried his head away with her, by the \nsight of it to inspire her people to more determined resistance \nto the enemy. \n\n\n\nPART IV 67 \n\nShe, questioned if she knew us men, at first \n\nWas silent ; closer prest, denied it not : \n\nAnd then, demanded if her mother knew, \n\nOr Psyche, she affirm\'d not, or denied : \n\nFrom whence the Royal mind, familiar with her. \n\nEasily gathered either guilt. She sent \n\nFor Psyche, but she was not there ; she call\'d \n\nFor Psyche\'s child to cast it from the doors ; \n\nShe sent for Blanche to accuse her face to face; ^~^ \n\nAnd I slipt out : but whither will you now ? \n\nAnd where are Psyche, Cyril ? both are fled : \n\nWhat, if together? that were not so well. \n\nWould rather we had never come ! I dread \n\nHis wildness, and the chances of the dark." \n\n"And yet," I said, " you wrong him more than I \nThat struck him : this is proper to the clown, \nTho\' smock\'d, or furr\'d and purpled, still the clown, \nTo harm the thing that trusts him, and to shame \nThat which he says he loves : for Cyril, howe\'er -"** \nHe deal in frolic, as to-night \xe2\x80\x94 the song \nMight have been worse and sinn\'d in grosser lips \nBeyond all pardon \xe2\x80\x94 as it is, I hold \nThese flashes on the surface are not he. \nHe has a solid base of temperament ; \nBut as the water-lily starts and slides \nUpon the level in little puffs of wind, \nTho\' anchor\'d to the bottom, such is he." \n\n212 Us men: us to be men. \n\n217 Either guilt: the guilt of both. \n\n227 Clown: boorish fellow. \n\n228 Smock\'d or furr\'d and purpled: wearing the dress of a peasant \n\nor the rich robes of nobles. \n\n\n\n68 THE PRINCESS \n\nScarce had I ceased when from a tamarisk near \nTwo Proctors leapt upon us, crying, \'\' Names " : -^^ \nHe, standing still, was clutch\'d ; but I began \nTo thrid the musky-circled mazes, wind \nAnd double in and out the boles, and race \nBy all the fountains : fleet I was of foot : \nBefore me shower\'d the rose in flakes ; behind \nI heard the puff\'d pursuer; at mine ear \nBubbled the nightingale and heeded not, \nAnd secret laughter tickled all my soul. \nAt last I hook\'d my ankle in a vine. \nThat claspt the feet of a Mnemosyne, ^\xc2\xb0^ \n\nAnd falling on my face was caught and known. \n\nThey haled us to the Princess where she sat \nHigh in the hall : above her droop\'d a lamp, \nAnd made the single jewel on her brow \nBurn like the mystic fire on a mast-head, \nProphet of storm : a handmaid on each side \nBow\'d toward her, combing out her long black hair \nDamp from the river ; and close behind her stood \nEight daughters of the plough, stronger than men, \nHuge women blowzed with health, and wind, and \nrain, -\xc2\xab" \n\n239 Tamarisk: a shrub or tree having minute scalelike leaves, native to \n\nSouthern Europe and Asia. \n242 Thrid the . . . mazes. That is, thread the narrow, winding paths \n\nwith their borders of fragrant flowers. \n250 Mnemosyne: the goddess of memory. \n252 Haled: conducted by force. \n255 Mystic fire: the phenomenon popularly known as " St. Elmo\'s fire," \n\ntaking its name from the patron saint of sailors; a flamelike \n\nelectrical discharge sometimes seen on dark, stormy nights at some \n\nprominent point on a ship. \n\n259 Daughters of the plow: peasant women. \n\n260 Blowzed: coarse and ruddy-faced. \n\n\n\nPART IV 69 \n\nAnd labor. Each was like a Druid rock ; \n\nOr like a spire of land that stands apart \n\nCleft from the main, and wail\'d about with mews. \n\nThen, as we came, the crowd dividing clove \nAn advent to the throne : and therebeside, \nHalk-naked as if caught at once from bed \nAnd tumbled on the purple footcloth, lay \nThe lily-shining child ; and on the left, \nBow\'d on her palms and folded up from wrong. \nHer round white shoulder shaken with her sobs, ^^\xc2\xae \nMelissa knelt; but Lady Blanche erect \nStood up and spake, an affluent orator. \n\n" It was not thus, O Princess, in old days : \nYou prized my counsel, lived upon my lips : \nI led you then to all the Castalies ; \nI fed you with the milk of every Muse; \nI loved you like this kneeler, and you me \nYour second mother: those were gracious times. \nThen came your new friend : you began to change \xe2\x80\x94 \nI saw it and grieved \xe2\x80\x94 to slacken and to cool ; -^*^ \n\nTill taken with her seeming openness \nYou turn\'d your warmer currents all to her. \nTo me you froze : this was my meed for all. \n\n\n\n261 Druid rock. Like those at Stonehenge and other places, sup- \nposed to have been placed in position by the Druids, or ancient \nCeltic priests. \n\n263 Wail\'d about tvifh niezi\'s: surrounded by screaming sea mews. \n\n264 Clove: cleaved. \n272 Affluent: fluent. \n\n275 Castalies: sources of inspiration. Castalia was a celebrated spring \non Mount Parnassus, above the city of Delphi. Its waters, col- \nlected in a square stone basin, were sacred to the Muses and \nApollo. \n\n277 This kneeler: Melissa. \n\n\n\n70 THE PRINCESS \n\nYet I bore up in part from ancient love, \n\nAnd partly that I hoped to win you back, \n\nAnd partly conscious of my own deserts, \n\nAnd partly that you were my civil head, \n\nAnd chiefly you were born for something great, \n\nIn which I might your fellow-worker be, \n\nWhen time should serve ; and thus a noble scheme "^\xc2\xb0 \n\nGrew up from seed we two long since had sown ; \n\nIn us true growth, in her a Jonah\'s gourd, \n\nUp in one night and due to sudden sun: \n\nWe took this palace ; but even from the first \n\nYou stood in your own light and darken\'d mine. \n\nWhat student came but that you planed her path \n\nTo Lady Psyche, younger, not so wise, \n\nA foreigner, and I your countrywoman, \n\nI your old friend and tried, she new in all ? \n\nBut still her lists were swell\'d and mine were lean ; ^^^ \n\nYet I bore up in hope she would be known : \n\nThen came these wolves : they knew her : tJicy endured. \n\nLong-closeted with her the yestermorn. \n\nTo tell her what they were, and she to hear : \n\nAnd me none told : not less to an eye like mine, \n\nA lidless watcher of the public weal. \n\nLast night, their mask was patent, and my foot \n\nWas to you : but I thought again : I fear\'d \n\nTo meet a cold \' We thank you, we shall hear of it \n\nFrom Lady Psyche \' : you had gone to her, ^^"^ \n\nShe told, perforce ; and winning easy grace, \n\nNo doubt, for slight delay, remain\'d among us \n\n292 Jonah\'s gourd sprang up in a night and withered at once. \n\n296 Planed: smoothed. \n\n310 Had gone: would have gone. \n\n311 She fold: she would have told. \n\n\n\nPART IV 71 \n\nIn our young nursery still unknown, the stem \n\nLess grain than touchwood, while my honest heat \n\nWere all miscounted as malignant haste \n\nTo push my rival out of place and power. \n\nBut public use required she should be known ; \n\nAnd since my oath was ta\'en for public use, \n\nI broke the letter of it to keep the sense. \n\nI spoke not then at first, but watch\'d them well, ^^^ \n\nSaw that they kept apart, no mischief done ; \n\nAnd yet this day (tho\' you should hate me for it) \n\nI came to tell you ; found that you had gone, \n\nRidden to the hills, she likewise : now, I thought, \n\nThat surely she will speak ; if not, then I : \n\nDid she ? These monsters blazon\'d what they were, \n\nAccording to the coarseness of their kind, \n\nFor thus I hear; and known at last (my work) \n\nAnd full of cowardice and guilty shame \xe2\x80\x94 \n\nI grant in her some sense of shame \xe2\x80\x94 she flies ; ^^^ \n\nAnd I remain on whom to wreak your rage, \n\nI, that have lent my life to build up yours, \n\nI, that have wasted here health, wealth, and time, \n\nAnd talent, I \xe2\x80\x94 you know it \xe2\x80\x94 I will not boast : \n\nDismiss me, and I prophesy your plan. \n\nDivorced from my experience, will be chaflf \n\nFor every gust of chance, and men will say \n\nWe did not know the real light, but chased \n\nThe wisp that flickers where no foot can tread." \n\nShe ceased : the Princess answer\'d coldly, " Good : ^*^ \nYour oath is broken : we dismiss you : go. \n\n\n\n314 Grain: strong, sound wood. Touchwood: decayed wood or dried \nfungi used for tinder. \n\n\n\n72 THE PRINCESS \n\nFor this lost lamb " (she pointed to the child), \n" Our mind is changed ; we take it to ourself." \n\nThereat the Lady stretch\'d a vulture throat, \nAnd shot from crooked lips a haggard smile. \n** The plan was mine. I built the nest," she said, \n" To hatch the cuckoo. Rise !" and stoop\'d to updrag \nMelissa : she, half on her mother propt. \nHalf-drooping from her, turn\'d her face, and cast \nA liquid look on Ida, full of prayer, 350 \n\nWhich melted Florian\'s fancy as she hung, \nA Niobean daughter, one arm out. \nAppealing to the bolts of Heaven ; and while \nWe gazed upon her came a little stir \nAbout the doors, and on a sudden rush\'d \nAmong us, out of breath, as one pursued, \nA woman-post in flying raiment. Fear \nStared in her eyes, and chalk\'d her face, and wing\'d \nHer transit to the throne, whereby she fell \nDelivering seal\'d dispatches which the Head ^^^ \n\nTook half-amazed^ and in her lion\'s mood \nTore open, silent we with blind surmise \nRegarding, while she read, till over brow \nAnd cheek and bosom brake the wrathful bloom \nAs of some fire against a stormy cloud, \n\n\n\n347 The cuckoo lays its eggs in the nests of other birds, that the lat- \nter may do the hatching and care for the young birds. \n\n352 A Niobean daughter. That is. like one of the doomed daughters \nof Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus. The mother was so proud of \nher seven beautiful daughters and a like number of handsome \nsons that she exasperated Apollo and Diana, who killed them \nall, striking them down, one by one, with arrows shot from be- \nhind a cloud which hid the wrathful god and goddess. Grief \nover the loss of her children turned Niobe into stone. \n\n357 Woman-post. That is, a woman who brought news. \n\n\n\nPART IV 73 \n\nWhen the wild peasant rights himself, the rick \n\nFlames, and his anger reddens in the heavens ; \n\nFor anger most it seem\'d, while now her breast. \n\nBeaten with some great passion at her heart, \n\nPalpitated, her hand shook, and w^e heard "^\xc2\xae \n\nIn the dead hush the papers that she held \n\nRustle : at once the lost lamb at her feet \n\nSent out a bitter bleating for its dam ; \n\nThe plaintive cry jarr\'d on her ire ; she crushed \n\nThe scrolls together, made a sudden turn \n\nAs if to speak, but, utterance failing her. \n\nShe whirl\'d them on to me, as who should say \n\n" Read," and I read \xe2\x80\x94 two letters \xe2\x80\x94 one her sire\'s : \n\n" Fair daughter, when we sent the Prince your way \nWe knew not your ungracious laws, which learnt, ^^"^ \nWe, conscious of what temper you are built. \nCame all in haste to hinder wrong, but fell \nInto his father\'s hand, who has this night, \nYou lying close upon his territory, \nSlipt round and in the dark invested you, \nAnd here he keeps me hostage for his son/\' \n\nThe second was my father\'s running thus : \n" You have our son : touch not a hair of his head : \nRender him up unscathed : give him your hand : \nCleave to your contract : tho\' indeed we hear "^\xc2\xb0 \n\nYou hold the woman is the better man ; \nA rampant heresy, such as if it spread \n\n\n\n366 The wild peasant. Between 1830 and 1840 troubles between Eng- \nglish landlords and their tenants led to the destruction by the \nlatter of much valuable property belonging to the former. The \nburning of hayricks was a common offence at this time. Rights: \navenges. \n\n\n\n74 THE PRINCESS \n\nWould make all women kick against their lords \nThro\' all the world, and which might well deserve \nThat we this night should pluck your palace down ; \nAnd we will do it, unless you send us back \nOur son, on the instant, whole." \n\nSo far I read ; \nAnd then stood up and spoke impetuously: \n\n" O not to pry and peer on your reserve, \nBut led by golden wishes, and a hope *\xc2\xb0^ \n\nThe child of regal compact, did I break \nYour precinct ; not a scorner of your sex \nBut venerator, zealous it should be \nAll that it might be : hear me, for I bear, \nTho\' man, yet human, whatsoe\'er your wrongs, \nFro::i the flaxen curl to the gray lock a life \nLess mine than yours : my nurse would tell me of you ; \nI babbled for you, as babies for the moon. \nVague brightness ; when a boy, you stoop\'d to me \nFrom all high places, lived in all fair lights, *^^ \n\nCam.e in long breezes rapt from inmost south \nAv\'d blown to inmost north ; at eve and dawn \nWith Ida, Ida, Ida, rang the woods ; \nThe leader wild-swan in among the stars \nWould clang it, and lapt in wreaths of glowworm light \nThe mellow breaker murmur\'d Ida. Now, \nBecause I would have reach\'d you, had you been \nSphered up with Cassiopeia, or the enthroned \n\n\n\n395 Pluck . . . domn. A Shakespearean expression. Cf. 1. 91, Part I. \n393 Kick against: revolt from. \n415 Glowworm: phosphorescent. \n\n418 Cassiopeia: an Ethiopian queen who after her death was placed \nin the heavens as a constellation. \n\n\n\nPART IV 75 \n\nPersephone in Hades, now at lengtli, \n\nThose winters of abeyance all worn out, *^ \n\nA man I came to see you : but, indeed, \n\nNot in this frequence can I lend full tongue, \n\nnoble Ida, to those thoughts that wait \nOn you, their center : let me say but this, \nThat many a famous man and woman, town \nAnd landskip, have I heard of, after seen \n\nThe dwarfs of presage : tho\' when known, there grew \n\nAnother kind of beauty in detail \n\nMade them worth knowing ; but in you I found \n\nMy boyish dream involved and dazzled down *"" \n\nAnd master\'d, while that after-beauty makes \n\nSuch head from act to act, from hour to hour. \n\nWithin me, that except you slay me here, \n\nAccording to your bitter statute-book, \n\n1 cannot cease to follow you, as they say \nThe seal does music; who desire you more \nThan growing boys their manhood ; dying lips. \nWith many thousand matters left to do. \n\nThe breath of life ; O more than poor men wealth. \nThan sick men health \xe2\x80\x94 yours, yours, not mine \xe2\x80\x94 but \nhalf ^^\xc2\xab \n\n419 Persephone, the daughter of Ceres, was seen by Pluto just after \n\nhe had been struck by one of Cupid\'s darts. Filled with love \nfor the beautiful maiden, he carried her away by force and made \nher his queen. The Prince means that he would have made \nhis way to the Princess wherever she might have been \xe2\x80\x94 among \nthe stars or in the nether world. \n\n420 Those ivinters of abeyance. That is, all the years during which \n\nthe betrothal had been held in abeyance. \n422 Frequence: gathering; assemblage. \n\n426 Landskip: landscape. The old form of the word, always used by \n\nTennyson. \n\n427 Dwarfs of presage: far from coming up to expectation. \n430 Involved: included, contained. \n\n436 The seal is said to be attracted by certain musical sounds. \n\n\n\n76 THE PRINCESS \n\nWithout you ; with you, whole ; and of those halves \nYou worthiest ; and howe\'er you block and bar \nYour heart with system out from mine, I hold \nThat it becomes no man to nurse despair, \nBut in the teeth of clench\'d antagonisms \nTo follow up the worthiest till he die: \nYet that I came not all unauthorized \nBehold your father\'s letter." \n\nOn one knee \nKneeling, I gave it, which she caught, and dash\'d \nUnopen\'d at her feet : a tide of fierce ^ \n\nInvective seem\'d to wait behind her lips, \nAs waits a river level with the dam \nReady to burst and flood the world with foam : \nAnd so she would have spoken, but there rose \nA hubbub in the court of half the maids \nGather\'dtogether : from the illumined hall. \nLong lanes of splendor slanted o\'er a press \nOf snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes, \nAnd rainbow robes, and gems and gemlike eyes, \nAnd gold and golden heads ; they to and fro ^ \n\nFluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, some pale \nAll open-mouth\'d, all gazing to the light, \nSome crying there was an army in the land. \nAnd some that men were in the very walls, \nAnd some they cared not ; till a clamor grew \nAs of a new-world Babel, woman-built. \n\n\n\n466 Babel: the name of a tower that the descendants of Noah began \nto build, the top of which was to reach to heaven, but whicli \nwas never finished because Jehovah confounded the speech of \nthe builders so that they could not understand one another, and \nscattered them over the face of the earth. The name of the \ntower. Babel (from the Hebrew balbel, "to confound") has \ncome to be applied to any scene of noise and confusion. \n\n\n\nPART IV 77 \n\nAnd worse-confounded: high above them stood \nThe placid marble Muses, looking peace. \n\nNot peace she look\'d, the Head : but rising up \nRobed in the long night of her deep hair, so *^^ \n\nTo the open window moved, remaining there \nFixt like a beacon-tower above the waves \nOf tempest, when the crimson-rolling eye \nGlares ruin, and the wild birds on the light \nDash themselves dead. She stretch\'d her arms and \n\ncall\'d \nAcross the tumult, and the tumult fell. \n\n" What fear ye, brawlers? am not I your Head? \nOn me, me, me, the storm first breaks : / dare \nAll these male thunderbolts : what is it ye fear? \nPeace ! there are those to avenge us and they come : *\xc2\xae^ \nIf not,\xe2\x80\x94 myself were like enough, O girls, \nTo unfurl the maiden banner of our rights, \nAnd clad in iron burst the ranks of war, \nOr, falling, protomartyr of our cause, \nDie : yet I blame you not so much for fear ; \nSix thousand years of fear have made you that \nFrom which I would redeem you : but for those \nThat stir this hubbub \xe2\x80\x94 you and you \xe2\x80\x94 I know \nYour faces there in the crowd\xe2\x80\x94 to-morrow morn \nWe hold a great convention : then shall they ^^ \n\nThat love their voices more than duty, learn \nWith whom they deal, dismiss\'d in shame to live \nNo wiser than their mothers, household stuff, \nLive chattels, mincers of each other\'s fame, \n\n473 Crimson-rolling eye: the revolving prisms in a lighthouse. \n484 Protomartyr: first martyr. \n\n\n\n78 THE PRINCESS \n\nFull of weak poison, turnspits for the clown, \n\nThe drunkard\'s football, laughing-stocks of Time, \n\nWhose brains are in their hands and in their heels. \n\nBut fit to flaunt, to dress, to dance, to thrum. \n\nTo tramp, to scream, to burnish, and to scour. \n\nFor ever slaves at home and fools abroad." ^\xc2\xb0\xc2\xae \n\nShe, ending, waved her hands ; thereat the crowd \nMuttering, dissolved : then with a smile, that look\'d \nA stroke of cruel sunshine on the cliff. \nWhen all the glens are drown\'d in azure gloom \nOf thunder-shower, she floated to us and said : \n\n" You have done well and like a gentleman. \nAnd like a prince : you have our thanks for all : \nAnd you look well too in your woman\'s dress : \nWell have you done and like a gentleman. \nYou saved our life : we owe you bitter thanks : ^\'^^ \n\nBetter have died and spilt our bones in the flood \xe2\x80\x94 \nThen men had said \xe2\x80\x94 but now \xe2\x80\x94 What hinders me \nTo take such bloody vengeance on you both? \xe2\x80\x94 \nYet since our father \xe2\x80\x94 Wasps in our good hive. \nYou would-be quenchers of the light to be, \nBarbarians, grosser than your native bears \xe2\x80\x94 \nO would I had his scepter for one hour ! \nYou that have dared to break our bound, and gull\'d \nOur servants, WTong\'d and lied and thwarted us \xe2\x80\x94 \n/ wed with thee ! / bound by precontract ^-* \n\nYour bride, your bondslave ! not tho\' all the gold \n\n495 Turnspits: in olden days servants whose duty it was to turn the \nspit or metal rod on which meat was placed before the fire for \nroasting; menials. \n\n504 Azure gloom: blue or purplish shadows [often to be seen in a \nvalley just before sunset]. \n\n\n\nPART IV 79 \n\nThat veins the world were pack\'d to make your crown, \nAnd every spoken tongue should lord you. Sir, \nYour falsehood and yourself are hateful to us : \nI trample on your offers and on you : \nBegone : we will not look upon you more. \nHere, push them out at gates." \n\nIn wrath she spake. \nThen those eight mighty daughters of the plough \nBent their broad faces toward us and address\'d \nTheir motion : twice I sought to plead my cause, ^^^ \nBut on my shoulder hung their heavy hands, \nThe weight of destiny : so from her face \nThey push\'d us, down the steps, and thro\' the court, \nAnd with grim laughter thrust us out at gates. \n\nWe crossed the street and gain\'d a petty mound \nBeyond it, whence we saw the lights and heard \nThe voices murmuring. While I listen\'d, came \nOn a sudden the weird seizure and the doubt : \nI seem\'d to move among a world of ghosts ; \nThe Princess with her monstrous woman-guard, ^*\xc2\xb0 \nThe jest and earnest working side by side, \nThe cataract and the tumult and the kings \nWere shadows ; and the long fantastic night \nWith all its doings had and had not been, \nAnd all things were and were not. \n\nThis went by \nAs strangely as it came, and on my spirits \nSettled a gentle cloud of melancholy ; \nNot long : I shook it off ; for spite of doubts \nAnd sudden ghostly shadowings I was one \n\n523 Lord you: call you lord. \n\n529, 530 Address\'d their motion: started toward us. \n\n\n\n80 THE PRINCESS \n\nTo whom the touch of all mischance but came ^^ \n\nAs night to him that sitting on a hill \n\nSees the midsummer, midnight, Norway sun \n\nSet into sunrise ; then we moved away. \n\nINTERLUDE \n\nThy voice is heard thro\' rolling drums, \n\nThat beat to battle where he stands; \nThy face across his fancy comes, \n\nAnd gives the battle to his hands: \nA moment, while the trumpets blow, \n\nHe sees his brood about thy knee; \nThe next, like fire he meets the foe, \n\nAnd strikes him dead for thine and thee. \n\nSo Lilia sang : we thought her half-possess\'d, \n\nShe struck such warbling fury thro\' the words ; *** \n\nAnd, after, feigning pique at what she call\'d \n\nThe raillery, or grotesque, or false sublime \xe2\x80\x94 \n\nLike one that wishes at a dance to change \n\nThe music \xe2\x80\x94 clapt her hands and cried for war, \n\nOr some grand fight to kill and make an end : \n\nAnd he that next inherited the tale, \n\nHalf turning to the broken statue, said, \n\n\'\' Sir Ralph has got your colors ; if I prove \n\nYour knight, and fight your battle, what for me ? " \n\nIt chanced, her empty glove upon the tomb ^** \n\nLay by her like a model of her hand. \n\nShe took it and she flung it. \'\' Fight," she said, \n\n" And make us all we would be, great and good." \n\n\n\nInterlude. From here on the poem takes on a more and more serious \ntone. Strength begins to develop in the character of the Prince, \nand the Princess is at length made to reveal the latent woman- \nliness in her nature. \n\n\n\nPART V 81 \n\nHe knightlike in his cap instead of casque, \nA cap of Tyrol borrow\'d from the hall, \nArranged the favor, and assumed the Prince. \n\n\n\nNow, scarce three paces measured from the mound, \nWe stumbled on a stationary voice, \nAnd " Stand, who goes ? " \'\' Two from the palace," I. \n" The second two : they wait," he said, " pass on ; \nHis Highness wakes " : and one, that clash\'d in arms, \nBy glimmering lanes and walls of canvas led \nThreading the soldier-city, till we heard \nThe drowsy folds of our great ensign shake \nFrom blazon\'d lions o\'er the imperial tent \nWhispers of war. \n\nEntering, the sudden light ^^ \n\nDazed me half-blind : I stood and seem\'d to hear, \nAs in a poplar grove when a light wind wakes \nA lisping of the innumerous leaf and dies, \nEach hissing in his neighbor\'s ear ; and then \nA strangled titter, out of which there brake \nOn all sides, clamoring etiquette to death, \nUnmeasured mirth ; while now the two old kings \nBegan to wag their baldness up and down, \nThe fresh young captians flash\'d their glittering teeth. \n\n\n\n26 Favor: a term from the language of chivalry to designate the \nribbon or other article worn by the knight in the tourney as \nsign of his lady\'s favor. \nPart V. \n2 Stationary voice. That is, the voice of the sentry. \n4 The second two. Cyril and Psyche had preceded them. \n\n13 Innumerous: innumerable. \n\n14 Hissing: whispering. \n\n\n\n82 THE PRINCESS \n\nThe huge bush-bearded barons heaved and blew, \nAnd slain with laughter roll\'d the gilded squire. \n\nAt length my sire, his rough cheek wet with tears, \nPanted from weary sides, " King, you are free ! \nWe did but keep you surety for our son. \nIf this be he, \xe2\x80\x94 or a draggled mawkin, thou. \nThat tends her bristled grunters in the sludge " ; \nFor I was drench\'d with ooze, and torn with briers. \nMore crumpled than a poppy from the sheath. \nAnd all one rag, disprinced from head to heel. \nThen som.e one sent beneath his vaulted palm \nA whisper\'d jest to some one near him, \'\' Look. \nHe has been among his shadows." " Satan take \nThe old women and their shadows !" \xe2\x80\x94 thus the King \nRoar\'d \xe2\x80\x94 \'\' make yourself a man to fight with men. \nGo : Cyril told us all." \n\nAs boys that slink \nFrom ferule and the trespass-chiding eye. \nAway we stole, and transient in a trice \nFrom what was left of faded woman-slough \nTo sheathing splendors and the golden scale \nOf harness, issued in the sun, that now \nLeapt from the dewy shoulders of the Earth, \nAnd hit the Northern hills. Here Cyril met us, \nA little shy at first, but by and by \n\n\n\n21 Squire: the attendant of a knight. \n\n25 Mawkin: slattern. \n\n26 Sludge: mud. \n\n28 From the sheath: newly opened. \n\n37 Transient: passing. \n\n38 Woman-slough. That is, the women\'s garments in which they had \n\nbeen masquerading. Slough (pronounced: sluff) : the cast-off \nskin of a snake. \n40 Harness: armor. \n\n\n\nPART V 83 \n\nWe twain, with mutual pardon ask\'d and given \nFor stroke and song, resolder\'d peace, whereon \nFollowed his tale. Amazed he fled away \nThro\' the dark land, and later in the night \nHad come on Psyche weeping : *\' then we fell \nInto your father\'s hand, and there she lies, \nBut will not speak nor stir." \n\nHe show\'d a tent ^^ \n\nA stone-shot off : we enter\'d in, and there \nAmong piled arms and rough accouterments, \nPitiful sight, wrapp\'d in a soldier\'s cloak. \nLike some sweet sculpture draped from head to foot, \nAnd push\'d by rude hands from its pedestal, \nAll her fair length upon the ground she lay ; \nAnd at her head a follower of the camp, \nA charr\'d and wrinkled piece of womanhood, \nSat watching like a watcher by the dead. \n\nThen Florian knelt, and " Come," he whisper\'d to \nher, \n" Lift up your head, sweet sister : lie not thus. \nWhat have you done but right ? you could not slay \nMe, nor your prince : look up : be comforted : \nSweet is it to have done the thing one ought. \nWhen fallen in darker ways." And Hkewise I : \n" Be comforted : have I not lost her too, \nIn whose least act abides the nameless charm \nThat none has else for me ? " She heard, she moved, \nShe moan\'d, a folded voice ; and up she sat. \nAnd raised the cloak from brows as pale and smooth "^^ \nAs those that mourn half-shrouded over death \n\n69 Folded: muffled. \n\n\n\n84 THE PRINCESS \n\nIn deathless marble. " Her," she said, " my friend- \nParted from her \xe2\x80\x94 betray\'d her cause and mine \xe2\x80\x94 \nWhere shall I breathe ? why kept ye not your faith ? \nO base and bad ! what comfort ? none for me ! " \nTo whom remorseful Cyril, " Yet I pray \nTake comfort : live, dear lady, for your child ! " \nAt which she lifted up her voice and cried. \n\n\'* Ah me, my babe, my blossom, ah, my child, \nMy one sweet child, whom I shall see no more ! \nFor now will cruel Ida keep her back ; \nAnd either she will die from want of care, \nOr sicken with ill-usage, when they say \nThe child is hers \xe2\x80\x94 for every little fault, \nThe child is hers ; and they will beat my girl \nRemembering her mother : O my flower ! \nOr they will take her, they will make her hard. \nAnd she will pass me by in after-life \nWith some cold reverence worse than were she dead. \nIll mother that I was to leave her there, \nTo lag behind, scared by the cry they made, \nThe horror of the shame among them all : \nBut I will go and sit beside the doors. \nAnd make a wild petition night and day, \nUntil they hate to hear me like a wind \nWailing for ever, till they open to me, \nAnd lay my little blossom at my feet, \nMy babe, my sweet Aglaia, my one child ; \nAnd I will take her up and go my way. \nAnd satisfy my soul with kissing her : * \n\nAh ! what might that man not deserve of me \nWho gave me back my child ? " " Be comforted," . \nSaid Cyril, " you shall have it " ; but again \n\n\n\nPART V 85 \n\nShe veil\'d her brows, and prone she sank, and so, \nLike tender things that being caught feign death, \nSpoke not, nor stirr\'d. \n\nBy this a murmur ran \nThro\' all the camp, and inward raced the scouts \nWith rumor of Prince Arac hard at hand. \nWe left her by the woman, and without \nFound the gray kings at parle : and " Look you," \n\ncried \nMy father, " that our compact be fulfilled : \nYou have spoilt this child ; she laughs at you and man : \nShe wrongs herself, her sex, and me, and him : \nBut red-faced war has rods of steel and fire ; \nShe yields, or war." \n\nThen Gama turn\'d to me : \n" We fear, indeed, you spent a stormy time \nWith our strange girl ; and yet they say that still \nYou love her. Give us, then, your mind at large : \nHow say you, war or not ? " \n\n" Not war, if possible, \nO king," I said, " lest from the abuse of war, ^^\'^ \n\nThe desecrated shrine, the trampled year, \nThe smoldering homestead, and the household flower \nTorn from the lintel \xe2\x80\x94 all the common wrong \xe2\x80\x94 \nA smoke go up thro\' which I loom to her \nThree times a monster : now she lightens scorn \nAt him that mars her plan, but then would hate \n(And every voice she talk\'d with ratify it, \nAnd every face she looked on justify it) \nThe general foe. More soluble is this knot \n\n\n\n110 At parte: in conference, \n121 Year: harvest. \n125 Lightens: flashes. \n\n\n\n86 THE PRINCESS \n\nBy gentleness than war. I want her love. " \n\nWhat were I nigher this altho\' we dash\'d \nYour cities into shards with catapults ? \nShe would not love ; \xe2\x80\x94 or brought her chained, a slave, \nThe lifting of whose eyelash is my lord? \nNot ever would she love, but brooding turn \nThe book of scorn, till all my flitting chance \nWere caught within the record of her wrongs \nAnd crush\'d to death : and rather, Sire, than this \nI would the old God of war himself were dead, \nForgotten, rusting on his iron hills, ^* \n\nRotting on some wild shore with ribs of wreck, \nOr like an old-world mammoth bulk\'d in ice, \nNot to be molten out." \n\nAnd roughly spake \nMy father, " Tut, you know them not, the girls. \nBoy, when I hear you prate I almost think \nThat idiot legend credible. Look you, Sir ! \nMan is the hunter ; woman is his game : \nThe sleek and shining creatures of the chase, \nWe hunt them for the beauty of their skins ; \nThey love us for it, and we ride them down. ^^ \n\nWheedling and siding with them ! Out ! for shame ! \nBoy, there\'s no rose that\'s half so dear to them \nAs he that does the thing they dare not do, \nBreathing and sounding beauteous battle, comes \nWith the air of the trumpet round him, and leaps in \n\n\n\n132 Shards: pieces of brick and pottery. Catapults: engines of war, \n\nused before the invention of gunpowder, for throwing stones \n\nand other missiles. \n142 Mammoth: an extinct hairy elephant of gigantic size, remains of \n\nwhich have been discovered in the northern parts of both \n\nhemispheres. \n146 Idiot legend: the "ancient legend" referred to in 1. 5, Part I. \n\n\n\nPART V 87 \n\nAmong the women, snares them by the score \n\nFlatter\'d and fluster\'d, wins, tho\' dash\'d with death \n\nHe reddens what he kisses : thus I won \n\nYour mother, a good mother, a good wife. \n\nWorth winning; but this firebrand \xe2\x80\x94 gentleness ^^^ \n\nTo such as her ! if Cyril spake her true, \n\nTo catch a dragon in a cherry net, \n\nTo trip a tigress with a gossamer. \n\nWere wisdom to it." \n\n" Yea, but, Sire," I cried, \n\'\' Wild natures need wise curbs. The soldier? No: \nWhat dares not Ida do that she should prize \nThe soldier? I beheld her, when she rose \nThe yesternight, and storming in extremes \nStood for her cause, and flung defiance down \nGagelike to man, and had not shunn\'d the death, ^^** \nNo, not the soldier\'s ; yet I hold her, king, \nTrue woman : but you clash them all in one. \nThat have as many differences as we. \nThe violet varies from the lily as far \nAs oak from elm : one loves the soldier, one \nThe silken priest of peace, one this, one that. \nAnd some unworthily ; their sinless faith, \nA maiden moon that sparkles on a sty. \nGlorifying clown and satyr ; whence they need \nMore breadth of culture : is not Ida right ? ^^* \n\nThey worth it ? truer to the law within ? \n\n162 Cherry net. In England the cherry trees are often protected \nfrom the birds by nets. \n\n170 Gagelike: like a glove cast on the ground as a challenge to com- \nbat. \n\n172 Clash them all in one: fail to discriminate between those who \ndiffer in their natures. \n\n179 Satyr (pronounced: sa\'ter) : a fabled deity of the woods, part \nman and part goat. \n\n\n\n88 THE PRINCESS \n\nSeverer in the logic of a life? \n\nTwice as magnetic to sweet influences \n\nOf earth and heaven ? and she of whom you speak, \n\nMy mother, looks as whole as some serene \n\nCreation minted in the golden moods \n\nOf sovereign artists ; not a thought, a touch, \n\nBut pure as lines of green that streak the white \n\nOf the first snowdrop\'s inner leaves ; I say, \n\nNot like the piebald miscellany, man, ^\xc2\xae\xc2\xb0 \n\nBursts of great heart and slips in sensual mire, \n\nBut whole and one : and take them all-in-all. \n\nWere we ourselves but half as good, as kind, \n\nAs truthful, much that Ida claims as right \n\nHad ne\'er been mooted, but as frankly theirs \n\nAs dues of Nature. To our point : not war ; \n\nLest I lose all." \n\n" Nay, nay, you spake but sense," \nSaid Gama. *\' We remember love ourself \nIn our sweet youth ; we did not rate him then \nThis red-hot iron to be shaped with blows. ^^ \n\nYou talk almost like Ida : she can talk ; \nAnd there is something in it as you say : \nBut you talk kindlier : we esteem you for it. \xe2\x80\x94 \nHe seems a gracious and a gallant Prince, \nI would he had our daughter : for the rest, \nOur own detention, why, the causes weigh\'d, \nFatherly fears \xe2\x80\x94 you used us courteously \xe2\x80\x94 \nWe would do much to gratify your Prince \xe2\x80\x94 \nWe pardon it ; and for your ingress here \nUpon the skirt and fringe of our fair land, *^** \n\nYou did but come as goblins in the night, \n\n190 Piebald: literally, having spots cf dififerent colors. \n\n\n\nPART V 89 \n\nNor in the furrow broke the ploughman\'s head, \n\nNor burnt the grange, nor buss\'d the milking-maid. \n\nNor robb\'d the farmer of his bowl of cream : \n\nBut let your Prince (our royal word upon it, \n\nHe comes back safe) ride with us to our lines, \n\nAnd speak with Arac : Arac\'s word is thrice \n\nAs ours with Ida : something may be done \xe2\x80\x94 \n\nI know not what \xe2\x80\x94 and ours shall see us friends. \n\nYou, Hkewise, our late guests, if so you will, "^ \n\nFollow us : who knows ? we four may build some plan \n\nFoursquare to opposition." \n\nHere he reach\'d \nWhite hands of farewell to my sire, who growl\'d \nAn answer which, half-muffled in his beard, \nLet so much out as gave us leave to go. \n\nThen rode we with the old kings across the lawns \nBeneath huge trees, a thousand rings of Spring \nIn every bole, a song on every spray \nOf birds that piped their Valentines, and woke \nDesire in me to infuse my tale of love -^\'^ \n\nIn the old king\'s ears, who promised help, and oozed \nAll o\'er with honey\'d answer as we rode ; \nAnd blossom-fragrant slipt the heavy dews \nGathered by night and peace, with each light air \nOn our niail\'d heads : but other thoughts than peace \nBurnt in us, when we saw the embattled squares \nAnd squadrons of the Prince, trampling the flowers \nWith clamor : for among them rose a cry \n\n\n\n227 A thousand rings of Spring. As a ring is added in every year \nof growth, these trees must have been one thousand years old. \n229 Valentines: here, love-songs. \n237 The Prince: Arac. \n\n\n\n90 THE PRINCESS \n\nAs if to greet the king; they made a halt; \n\nThe horses yell\'d ; they clash\'d their arms ; the drum -*\xc2\xae \n\nBeat ; merrily-blowing shrilFd the martial fife ; \n\nAnd in the blast and bray of the long horn \n\nAnd serpent-throated bugle, undulated \n\nThe banner : anon to meet us lightly pranced \n\nThree captains out ; nor ever had I seen \n\nSuch thews of men: the midmost and the highest \n\nWas Arac : all about his motion clung \n\nThe shadow of his sister, as the beam \n\nOf the East, that play\'d upon them, made them glance \n\nLike those three stars of the airy Giant\'s zone, -^^ \n\nThat glitter burnish \'d by the frosty dafk ; \n\nAnd as the fiery Sirius alters hue. \n\nAnd bickers into red and emerald, shone \n\nTheir morions, wash\'d with morning, as they came. \n\nAnd I that prated peace, when first I heard \nWar-music, felt the blind wild-beast of force, \nWhose home is in the sinews of a man, \nStir in me as to strike : then took the king \nHis three broad sons ; with now a wandering hand \nAnd now a pointed finger, told them all : ^^* \n\nA common light of smiles at our disguise \n\n\n\n246 Such theTvs of men: men so strong. \n\n250 The airy Giant\'s zone: the three stars forming the belt of the \nconstellation Orion. Orion, a giant and a mighty hunter, was \nkilled by accident by the goddess Diana, and by her placed \namong the stars, where he now appears with his belt, sword, \nand club. \n\n252 Sirius: Dog-Star \xe2\x80\x94 the brightest of the stars. It changes its hue \n\nwhen near the horizon. \n\n253 Bickers: quivers. \n\n254 Morions. A morion is a kind of open helmet, without visor or \n\nbeaver. \n\n\n\nPART V 91 \n\nBroke from their lips, and, ere the windy jest \nHad labor\'d down within his ample lungs, \nTlie genial giant, Arac, roll\'d himself \nThrice in the saddle, then burst out in words : \n\n" Our land invaded, \'sdeath ! and he himself \nYour captive, yet my father wills not war : \nAnd, \'sdeath! myself, what care I, war or no? \nBut then this question of your troth remains : \nAnd there\'s a downright honest meaning in her ; "\'" \nShe flies too high, she flies too high ! and yet \nvShe ask\'d but space and fair-play for her scheme ; \nShe prest and prest it on me \xe2\x80\x94 I myself, \nWhat know I of these things ? but, life and soul ! \nI thought her half-right talking of her wrongs ; \nI say she flies too high, \'sdeath ! what of that ? \nI take her for the flower of womankind. \nAnd so I often told her, right or wrong ; \nAnd, Prince, she can be sweet to those she loves, \nAnd, right or wrong, I care not : this is all. ^so \n\nI stand upon her side : she made me swear it \xe2\x80\x94 \n\'Sdeath ! \xe2\x80\x94 and with solemn rites by candle-light \xe2\x80\x94 \nSwear by Saint something \xe2\x80\x94 I forget her name \xe2\x80\x94 \nHer that talk\'d down the fifty wisest men; \nShe was a princess too ; and so I swore. \nCome, this is all ; she will -not : waive your claim : \nli not, the foughten field, what else, at once \nDecides it, \'sdeath ! against my father\'s will." \n\n266 \'Sdeath: God\'s death. An ancient oath. \n\n283 Sahit something. He means St. Catharine of Alexandria, who \naccording to an old legend converted to Christianity fifty wise \nmen whom the Emperor Maxentius sent to dispute with her. \n\n287 Foughten: the old ending of the past participle, en, added to \nthe modern participle, fought. \n\n\n\n92 THE PRINCESS \n\nI lagg\'d in answer, loth to render up \nMy precontract, and loth by brainless war ^ao \n\nTo cleave the rift of difference deeper yet ; \nTill one of those two brothers, half aside \nAnd fingering at the hair about his lip. \nTo prick us on to combat, \'\' Like to like ! \nThe woman\'s garment hid the woman\'s heart." \nA taunt that clench\'d his purpose like a blow ! \nFor fiery-short was Cyril\'s counter-scoff, \nAnd sharp I answer\'d, touch\'d upon the point \nWhere idle boys are cowards to their shame, \n" Decide it here: why not? we are three to three." ^*^^ \n\nThen spake the third, " But three to three? no more? \nNo more, and in our noble sister\'s cause? \nMore, more, for honor ! every captain waits \nHungry for honor, angry for his king. \nMore, more, some fifty on a side, that each \nMay breathe himself, and quick ! by overthrow \nOf these or those, the question settled die." \n\n" Yea," answer\'d I, " for this wild wreath of air. \nThis flake of rainbov/ flying on the highest \nFoam of men\'s deeds \xe2\x80\x94 this honor, if ye will. ^^\xc2\xb0 \n\nIt needs must be for honor if at all : \nSince, what decision? if we fail, we fail, \nAnd if we win, we fail ; she would not keep \nHer compact." " \'Sdeath ! but we will send to her," \nSaid Arac, " worthy reasons why she should \nBide by this issue : let our missive thro\', \nAnd you shall have her answer by the word." \n\n299 Cowards to their shame: cowardly in their fear of seeming afraid. \n\n\n\nPART V 93 \n\n" Boys !" shriek\'d the old king, but vainlier than a \nhen \nTo her false daughters in the pool ; for none \nRegarded ; neither seem\'d there more to say : ^^** \n\nBack rode we to my father\'s camp, and found \nHe thrice had sent a herald to the gates. \nTo learn if Ida yet would cede our claim, \nOr by denial flush her babbling wells \nWith her own people\'s life: three times he went: \nThe first, he blew and blew, but none appeared : \nHe batter\'d at the doors ; none came : the next, \nAn awful voice within had warn\'d him thence : \nThe third, and those eight daughters of the plough \nCame sallying thro\' the gates, and caught his hair, ^^^ \nAnd so belabor \'d him on rib and cheek \nThey made him wild : not less one glance he caught \nThro\' open doors of Ida station\'d there \nUnshaken, clinging to her purpose, firm \nTho\' compass\'d by two armies and the noise \nOf arms ; and standing like a stately pine \nSet in a cataract on an island-crag, \nWhen storm is on the heights, and right and left \nSuck\'d from the dark heart of the long hills roll \nThe torrents, dash\'d to the vale : and yet her will ^^^ \nBred will in me to overcome it or fall. \n\nBut when I told the king that I was pledged \nTo fight in tourney for my bride, he clash\'d \nHis iron palms together with a cry ; \n\n319 False daughters: ducklings hatched by her. \n\n324 Flush: fill full. IV ells: springs. \n\n325 Life: life-blood. \n\n\n\n94 THE PRINCESS \n\nHimself would tilt it out among the lads : \n\nBut overborne by all his bearded lords \n\nWith reasons drawn from age and state, perforce \n\nHe yielded, wroth and red, with fierce demur ; \n\nAnd many a bold knight started up in heat, \n\nAnd sware to combat for my claim till death ^"^ \n\nAll on this side the palace ran the field \nFlat to the garden-wall ; and likewise here, \nAbove the garden\'s glowing blossom-belts, \nA column\'d entry shone and marble stairs, \nAnd great bronze valves, emboss\'d with Tomyris \nAnd what she did to Cyrus after fight. \nBut now fast barr\'d : so here upon the flat \nAll that long morn the lists were hammer\'d up, \nAnd all that morn the heralds to and fro. \nWith message and defiance, went and came ; ^\'^^ \n\nLast, Ida\'s answer, in a royal hand, \nBut shaken here and there, and rolling words \nOration-like. I kiss\'d it and I read : \n\n" O brother, you have known the pangs we felt, \nWhat heats of indignation when we heard \nOf those that iron-cramp\'d their women\'s feet ; \nOf lands in which at the altar the poor bride \nGives her harsh groom for bridal-gift a scourge ; \n\n355 Valves. See 1. 184. Part IV. Tomyris: a queen against whom \nCyrus the Great led an expedition in 529 B. C, and who de- \nfeated him. Cyrus being killed in the battle, Tomyris sought \nout his body and taking the head, dipped it into a skin filled \nwith blood, bidding the tyrant for once quench his thirst. \n\n358 Lists: the enclosure within which the combat was to take place. \n\n366 Those that iron-cramp\'d, etc.: the Chinese. \n\n368 Gives her harsh groom ... a scourge. This used to be a custom \nin Russia. \n\n\n\nPART V 95 \n\nOf living hearts that crack within the fire \n\nWhere smolder their dead despots ; and of those, \xe2\x80\x94 \'^\'\'^ \n\nMothers, \xe2\x80\x94 that, all prophetic pity, fling \n\nTheir pretty maids in the running flood, and swoops \n\nThe vulture, beak and talon, at the heart \n\nMade for all noble motion : and I saw \n\nThat equal baseness lived in sleeker times \n\nWith smoother men ; the old leaven leaven\'d all ; \n\nMillions of throats would bawl for civil rights. \n\nNo woman named : therefore I set my face \n\nAgainst all men, and lived but for mine own. \n\nFar off from men I built a fold for them ; ^*^ \n\nI stored it full of rich memorial ; \n\nI fenced it round with gallant institutes. \n\nAnd biting laws to scare the beasts of prey, \n\nAnd prosper\'d ; till a rout of saucy boys \n\nBrake on us at our books, and marr\'d our peace, \n\nMask\'d like our maids, blustering I know not what \n\nOf insolence and love, some pretext held \n\nOf baby troth, invalid, since my will \n\nSeal\'d not the bond \xe2\x80\x94 the striplings ! \xe2\x80\x94 for their sport ! \xe2\x80\x94 \n\nI tamed my leopards : shall I not tame these ? "\'^^ \n\nOr you ? or I ? for since you think me touch\'d \n\nIn honor \xe2\x80\x94 what ! I would not aught of false \xe2\x80\x94 \n\nIs not our cause pure? and whereas I know \n\nYour prowess, Arac, and what mother\'s blood \n\nYou draw from, fight ; you failing, I abide \n\nWhat end soever : fail you will not. Still, \n\nTake not his life : he risk\'d it for my own ; \n\n\n\n369, 370 Living hearts, etc. In India it was once the custom to \nburn a widow with her d6ad husband\'s body, \n\n381 Rich memorial: treasures of art \xe2\x80\x94 pictures, statues, etc. \n\n382 Institutes: rules and regulations. \n\n\n\n96 THE PRINCESS \n\nHis mother lives : yet whatsoe\'er you do, \nFight and fight well ; strike and strike home. O dear \nBrothers, the woman\'s Angel guards you, you *^^ \n\nThe sole men to be mingled with our cause, \nThe sole men we shall prize in the after-time. \nYour very armor hallowed, and your statues \nRear\'d, sung to, when, this gadfly brush\'d aside, \nWe plant a solid foot into the Time, \nAnd mold a generation strong to move \nWith claim on claim from right to right, till she \nWhose name is yoked with children\'s know herself ; \nAnd Knowledge in our own land make her free, \nAnd, ever following those two crowned twins, ^\'^^ \n\nCommerce and Conquest, shower the fiery grain \nOf freedom broadcast over all that orbs \nBetween the Northern and the Southern morn." \n\nThen came a postscript dash\'d across the rest : \n\'\' See that there be no traitors in your camp : \nWe seem a nest of traitors \xe2\x80\x94 none to trust \nSince our arms fail\'d \xe2\x80\x94 this Egypt-plague of men ! \nAlmost our maids were better at their homes. \nThan thus man-girdled here : indeed I think \nOur chiefest comfort is the little child *-^ \n\nOf one unworthy mother ; which she left : \nShe shall not have it back ; the child shall grow \nTo prize the authentic mother of her mind. \n\n\n\n404 Gadfly: the annoyance now being suffered. \n\n405 The time: the present age. \n\n412, 413 O\'i\'er all, etc.: over all the regions that lie upon the en- \ncircling surface of the earth from pole to pole [JVallace^. \n\n417 Our arms: Lady Blanche and Lady Psyche, her chief assistants. \n\nEgypt-plague. She likens the intruders to the plagues sent upon \nthe Egyptians to make them release the Hebrews from bondage. \n\n\n\nPART V 97 \n\nI took it for an hour in mine own bed \nThis morning; there the tender orphan hands \nFelt at my heart, and seem\'d to charm from thence \nThe wrath I nursed against the world : farewell." \n\nI ceased; he said, "Stubborn, but she may sit \nUpon a king\'s right hand in thunder-storms. \nAnd breed up warriors ! See now, tho\' yourself \xe2\x96\xa0*^*\' \nBe dazzled by the wildfire Love to sloughs \nThat swallow common sense, the spindling king, \nThis Gama swamp\'d in lazy tolerance. \nWhen the man wants weight, the woman takes it up, \nAnd topples down the scales ; but this is fixt \nAs are the roots of earth and base of all : \nMan for the field and woman for the hearth ; \nMan for the sword and for the needle she ; \nMan with the head and woman with the heart ; \nMan to command and woman to obey; **** \n\nAll else confusion. Look you ! the gray mare \nIs ill to live with, when her whinny shrills \nFrom tile to scullery, and her small goodman \nShrinks in his arm-chair while the fires of hell \nMix with his hearth : but you \xe2\x80\x94 she\'s yet a colt \xe2\x80\x94 \nTake, break her; strongly groom\'d and straitly curb\'d \nShe might not rank Avith those detestable \nThat let the bantling scald at home, and brawl \nTheir rights or wrongs like potherbs in the street. \nThey say she\'s comely ; there\'s the fairer chance : *^* \n/ like her none the less for rating at her ! \n\n\n\n4 11 The gray mare. According to an old saying, "The gray mare is \nthe better horse." The old king has little love for strong- \nminded, independent women. \n\n449 Potherbs: vegetables. \n\n\n\n98 THE PRINCESS \n\nBesides, the woman wed is not as we, \nBut suffers change of frame. A lusty brace \nOf twins may weed her of her folly. Boy, \nThe bearing and the training of a child \nIs w^oman\'s wisdom." \n\nThus the hard old king : \nI took my leave, for it was nearly noon ; \nI pored upon her letter which I held. \nAnd on the little clause, " take not his life " ; \nI mused on that wild morning in the w^oods, \nAnd on the " Follow, follow, thou shalt win " ; \nI thought on all the wrathful king had said, \nAnd how the strange betrothrnent w^as to end : \nThen I remember\'d that burnt socerer\'s curse \nThat one should fight with shadows and should fall \nAnd like a flash the weird affection came : \nKing, camp, and college turn\'d to hollow shows; \nI seem\'d to move in old memorial tilts, \nAnd doing battle with forgotten ghosts, \nTo dream myself the shadow of a dream ; \nAnd ere I woke it w^as the point of noon. \nThe lists were ready. Empanoplied and plumed \nWe enter\'d in, and waited, fifty there \nOpposed to fifty, till the trumpet blared \nAt the barrier like a w^ild horn in a land \nOf echoes, and a moment, and once more \nThe trumpet, and again ; at w^hich the storm \nOf galloping hoofs bare on the ridge of spears \nAnd riders front to front, until they closed \nIn conflict with the crash of shivering points. \nAnd thunder. Yet it seem\'d a dream, I dream\'d \n\n478 Bare on: bore forward. \n\n\n\nPART V 99 \n\nOf fighting. On his haunches rose the steed, \n\nAnd into fiery splinters leapt the lance, \n\nAnd out of stricken helmets sprang the fire. \n\nPart sat like rocks ; part reeFd but kept their seats ; \n\nPart roll\'d on the earth and rose again and drew ; \n\nPart stumbled mixt with floundering horses. Down \n\nFrom those two bulks at Arac\'s side, and down \n\nFrom Arac\'s arm, as from a giant\'s flail. \n\nThe large blows rain\'d, as here and everywliere "^^^^ \n\nMe rode the mellay, lord of the ringing lists. \n\nAnd all the plain, \xe2\x80\x94 ^brand, mace, and shaft, and shield \xe2\x80\x94 \n\nShocked, like an iron-clanging anvil bang\'d \n\nWith hammers ; till I thought, can this be he \n\nFrom Gama\'s dwarfish loins? if this be so. \n\nThe mother makes us most \xe2\x80\x94 and in my dream \n\nI glanced aside, and saw the palace-front \n\nAlive with fluttering scarfs and ladies\' eyes, \n\nAnd highest, among the statues, statuelike, \n\nBetween a cymbal\'d Miriam and a Jael, ^^^ \n\nWith Psyche\'s babe, was Ida watching us, \n\nA single band of gold about her hair, \n\nLike a Saint\'s glory up in heaven ; but she \n\nNo saint \xe2\x80\x94 inexorable \xe2\x80\x94 no tenderness \xe2\x80\x94 \n\nToo hard, too cruel : yet she sees me fight, \n\nYea, let her see me fall ! with that I drave \n\nAmong the thickest and bore down a Prince, \n\nAnd Cyril one. Yea, let me make my dream \n\n488 Those tzvo bulks: the twin brothers of Arac and the Princess. \n\n491 Mellay: melee; a confused fight. \n\n500 Miriam: a Hebrew prophetess, sister of Moses and Aaron, who \nafter the Children of Israel had crossed the Red Sea in safety \nsang a song of thanksgiving, to the accompaniment of timbrels \nplayed by herself and the rest of the Hebrew women. Jael: \nshe who slew Sisera, leader of the Canaanite army, by driv- \ning a nail into his forehead while he slept. \n\n\n\n100 THE PRINCESS \n\nAll that I would. But that large-molded man, \n\nHis visage all agrin as at a wake, ^^\'^ \n\nMade at me thro\' the press, and, staggering back \n\nWith stroke on stroke the horse and horseman, came \n\nAs comes a pillar of electric cloud, \n\nFlaying the roofs and sucking up the drains. \n\nAnd shadowing down the champaign till it strikes \n\nOn a wood, and takes, and breaks, and cracks, and \n\nsplits, \nAnd twists the grain with such a roar that Earth \nReels, and the herdsmen cry ; for everything \nGave way before him : only Florian, he \nThat loved me closer than his own right eye, ^-"^ \n\nThrust in between; but Arac rode him down: \nAnd Cyril seeing it, push\'d against the Prince, \nWith Psyche\'s color round his helmet, tough, \nStrong, supple, sinew-corded, apt at arms; \nBut tougher, heavier, stronger, he that smote \nAnd threw him : last I spurr\'d ; I felt my veins \nStretch with fierce heat ; a moment hand to hand, \nAnd sword to sword, and horse to horse we hung. \nTill I struck out and shouted ; the blade glanced, \nI did but shear a feather, and dream and truth ^^** \n\nFlow\'d from me ; darkness closed me ; and I fell. \n\nVI \n\nHome they brought her warrior dead; \n\nShe nor swoon\'d nor utter\'d cry: \nAll her maidens, watching, said, \n\n" She must weep or she will die." \n\n510 Wake: a festival which originally was held in commemoration \nof the dedication of a church lent which later degenerated into \nan all-night frolic. \n\n\n\nPART VI 101 \n\nThen they praised him, soft and low, \n\nCall\'d him worthy to be loved, \nTruest friend and noblest foe; \n\nYet she neither spoke nor moved. \n\nStole a maiden from her place, \n\nLightly to the warrior stept, \nTook the face-cloth from the face; \n\nYet she neither moved nor wept. \n\nRose a nurse of ninety years, \n\nSet his child upon her knee \xe2\x80\x94 \nLike summer tempest came her tears \xe2\x80\x94 \n\n" Sweet my child, I live for thee." \n\nMy dream had never died or lived again. \nAs in some mystic middle state I lay ; \nSeeing I saw not, hearing not I heard : \nTho\', if I saw not, yet they told me all. \nSo often that I speak as having seen. \n\nFor so it seem\'d, or so they said to me, \nThat all things grew more tragic and more strange ; \nThat when our side was vanquish\'d and my cause \nFor ever lost, there went up a great cry, \n" The Prince is slain." My father heard and ran ^*^ \nIn on the lists, and there unlaced my casque \nAnd grovel \'d on my body, and after him \nCame Psyche, sorrowing for Aglaia. \n\nBut high upon the palace Ida stood \nWith Psyche\'s babe in arm ; there on the roofs \nLike that great dame of Lapidoth she sang. \n\n16 Great dame of Lapidoth: Deborah, the wife of Lapidoth; a He- \nbrew prophetess, who by wise direction led the Hebrews to \ndefeat an army of the Canaanites, and who, after the victory \nof her people, sang a wonderful song of triumph and thanks- \ngiving. \n\n\n\n102 THE PRINCESS \n\n"Our enemies have fallen, have fallen: the seed, \n\nThe little seed they laugh\'d at in the dark, \n\nHas risen and cleft the soil, and grown a bulk \n\nOf spanless girth, that lays on every side 20 \n\nA thousand arms and rushes to the sun. \n\n"Our enemies have fallen, have fallen: they came, \n\nThe leaves wet with women\'s tears; they heard \n\nA noise of songs they would not understand; \n\nThey mark\'d it with the red cross to the fall\', \n\nAnd would have strown it, and are fallen themselves. \n\n"Our enemies have fallen, have fallen: they came, \n\nThe woodmen with their axes: lo the tree! \n\nBut we will make it faggots for the hearth, \n\nAnd shape it plank and beam for roof and floor, ^*^ \n\nAnd boats and bridges for the use of men. \n\n" Our enemies have fallen, have fallen: they struck; \nWith their own blows they hurt themselves, nor knew \nThere dwelt an iron nature in the grain; \nThe glittering axe was broken in their arms. \nTheir arms were shatter\'d to the shoulder blade. \n\n" Our enemies have fallen, but this shall grow \n\nA night of Summer from the heat, a breadth \n\nOf Autumn, dropping fruits of power; and roll\'d \n\nWith music in the growing breeze of Time, ^^^ \n\nThe tops shall strike from star to star, the fangs \n\nShall move the stony bases of the world. \n\n" And now, O maids, behold our sanctuary \nIs violate, our laws broken : fear we not \nTo break them more in their behoof, whose arms \n\n25 Mark\'d it -mth the red cross as a sign that it was one selected to \n\nbe felled. \n41 Fangs: roots \n\n\n\nPART VI 103 \n\nChampion\'d our cause and won it with a day \n\nBlanch\'d in our annals, and perpetual feast. \n\nWhen dames and heroines of the golden year \n\nShall strip a hundred hollows bare of Spring, \n\nTo rain an April of ovation round \xe2\x80\xa2^" \n\nTheir statues, borne aloft, the three ; but come, \n\nWe will be liberal, since our rights are won. \n\nLet them not lie in the tents with coarse mankind, \n\n111 nurses; but descend, and proffer these \n\nThe brethren of our blood and cause, that there \n\nLie bruised and maim\'d, the tender ministries \n\nOf female hands and hospitality." \n\nShe spoke, and with the babe yet in her arms, \nDescending, burst the great bronze valves, and led \nA hundred maids in train across the park. ^\'^ \n\nSome cowl\'d, and some bare-headed, on they came, \nTheir feet in flowers, her loveliest : by them went \nThe enamor\'d air sighing, and on their curls \nFrom the high tree the blossom wavering fell, \nAnd over them the tremulous isles of light \nSlided, they moving under shade ; but Blanche \nAt distance follow \'d : so they came : anon \nThro\' open field into the lists they wound \nTimorously ; and as the leader of the herd \nThat holds a stately fretwork to the sun, ^^ \n\nAnd follow\'d up by a hundred airy does. \nSteps with a tender foot, light as on air, \nThe lovely, lordly creature floated on \n\n47 Blanch\'d: marked with white; to be remembered. \n\n48 The golden year: the golden age about to dawn. \n\n49 Spring. That is, the blossoms of spring. \n70 A stately fretwork of branching antlers. \n\n\n\n104 THE PRINCESS \n\nTo where her wounded brethren lay ; there stay\'d ; \nKnelt on one knee, \xe2\x80\x94 the child on one, \xe2\x80\x94 and prest \nTheir hands, and call\'d them dear deliverers, \nAnd happy warriors, and immortal names, \nAnd said, " You shall not lie in the tents but here, \nAnd nursed by those for whom you fought, and served \nWith female hands and hospitality." \xc2\xae^ \n\nThen, whether moved by this, or was it chance. \nShe past my way. Up started from my side \nThe old lion, glaring with his whelpless eye. \nSilent ; but when she saw me lying stark, \nDishelm\'d and mute, and motionlessly pale, \nCold e\'en to her, she sigh\'d ; and when she saw \nThe haggard father\'s face and reverend beard \nOf grisly twine, all dabbled with the blood \nOf his own son, shudder\'d, a twitch of pain \nTortured her mouth, and o\'er her forehead past ^\'^ \nA shadow, and her hue changed, and she said : \n" He saved my life ; my brother slew him for it." \nNo more ; at which the king in bitter scorn \nDrew from my neck the painting and the tress. \nAnd held them up : she saw them, and a day \nRose from the distance on her memory, \nWhen the good queen, her mother, shore the tress \nWith kisses, ere the days of Lady Blanche : \n\n\n\n78 Here. Remember that the contest had taken place close to the pal- \nace of the Princess. \n\n83 The old Hon: the old king, father of the Prince. Whelpless eye. \nThat is, the eyes of a father bereft of his only child. \n\n88 Of grisly twine: looking like gray twine, matted and tangled as \nit was. \n\n94 The painting and the tress. See 1. 37, 38, Part I. \n\n\n\nPART VI 105 \n\nAnd then once more she look\'d at my pale face : \n\nTill understanding all the foolish work ^^^ \n\nOf Fancy, and the bitter close of all, \n\nHer iron will was broken in her mind ; \n\nHer noble heart was molten in her breast ; \n\nShe bow\'d, she set the child on the earth ; she laid \n\nA feeling finger on my brows, and presently \n\n*\' O Sire," she said, " he lives ; he is not dead : \n\nO let me have him with my brethren here \n\nIn our own palace : we will tend on him \n\nLike one of these ; if so, by any means. \n\nTo lighten this great clog of thanks, that make ^^^ \n\nOur progress falter to the woman\'s goal." \n\nShe said : but at the happy word " he lives " \nMy father stoop\'d, re-father\'d o\'er my wounds. \nSo those two foes above my fallen life. \nWith brow to brow like night and evening mixt \nTheir dark and gray, while Psyche ever stole \nA little nearer, till the babe that by us, \nHalf-lapt in glowing gauze and golden brede. \nLay like a new-fallen meteor on the grass, \nUncared for, spied its mother and began ^^\'^ \n\nA blind and babbling laughter, and to dance \nIts body, and reach its fatling innocent arms \nAnd lazy lingering fingers. She the appeal \nBrook\'d not, but clamoring out " Mine \xe2\x80\x94 mine \xe2\x80\x94 not \n\nyours, \nIt is not yours, but mine : give me the child !" \nCeased all on tremble: piteous was the cry: \n\n118 Brede: embroidery. \n124 Brook\'d: endured. \n126 On tremble: atremble. \n\n\n\n106 THE PRINCESS \n\nSo stood the unhappy mother open-mouth\'d, \n\nAnd turn\'d each face her way: wan was her cheek \n\nWith hollow watch, her blooming mantle torn. \n\nRed grief and mother\'s hunger in her eye, ^^^ \n\nxA.nd down dead-heavy sank her curls, and half \n\nThe sacred mother\'s bosom, panting, burst \n\nThe laces toward her babe ; but she nor cared \n\nNor knew it, clamoring on, till Ida heard, \n\nLook\'d up, and rising slowly from me, stood \n\nErect and silent, striking with her glance \n\nThe mother, me, the child ; but he that lay \n\nBeside us, Cyril, batter\'d as he was, \n\nTrail\'d himself up on one knee : then he drew \n\nHer robe to meet his lips, and down she look\'d ^*^ \n\nAt the arm\'d man sideways, pitying as it seem\'d, \n\nOr self-involved ; but when she learnt his face, \n\nRemembering his ill-omen\'d song, arose \n\nOnce more thro\' all her height, and o\'er him grew \n\nTall as a figure lengthen\'d on the sand \n\nWhen the tide ebbs in sunshine, and he said: \n\n" O fair and strong and terrible! Lioness \nThat with your long locks play the lion\'s mane I \nBut Love and Nature, these are two more terrible \nAnd stronger. See, your foot is on our necks, \'^\'\'\'^ \n\nWe vanquish\'d, you the victor of your will. \nWhat would you more ? give her the child ! remain \nOrb\'d in your isolation: he is dead. \nOr all as dead : henceforth we let you be : \nWin you the hearts of women ; and beware \nLest, where you seek the common love of these. \n\n142 Self -involved: absorbed in her own thoughts. Learnt: recognized. \n\n\n\nPART VI 107 \n\nThe common hate with the revolving wheel \n\nShould drag you down, and some great Nemesis \n\nBreak from a darken\'d future, crown\'d with fire, \n\nAnd tread you out for ever : but howsoe\'er ^^^ \n\nFixt in yourself, never in your own arms \n\nTo hold your own, deny not hers to her. \n\nGive her the child ! O if, I say, you keep \n\nOne pulse that beats true woman, if you loved \n\nThe breast that fed or arm that dandled you, \n\nOr own one port of sense not flint to prayer, \n\nGive her the child ! or if you scorn to lay it, \n\nYourself, in hands so lately claspt with yours. \n\nOr speak to her, your dearest, her one fault \n\nThe tenderness, not yours, that could not kill, "^ \n\nGive me it ; / will give it her." \n\nHe said : \nAt first her eye with slow dilation roll\'d \nDry flame, she listening ; after sank and sank \nAnd, into mournful twilight mellowing, dwelt \nFull on the child ; she took it : " Pretty bud ! \nLily of the vale ! half-open\'d bell of the woods ! \nSole comfort of my dark hour, when a world \nOf traitorous friend and broken system made \nNo purple in the distance, mystery. \nPledge of a love not to be mine, farewell ! ^^^ \n\nThese men are hard upon us as of old. \nWe two must part ; and yet how fain was I \nTo dream thy cause embraced in mine, to think \nI might be something to thee, when I felt \nThy helpless warmth about my barren breast \n\n\n\n158 Nemesis: the goddess of retribution or vengeance. \n166 Port: portal. \n\n\n\n108 THE PRINCESS \n\nIn the dead prime : but may thy mother prove \n\nAs true to thee as false, false, false to me ! \n\nAnd, if thou needs must bear the yoke, I wish it \n\nGentle as freedom " \xe2\x80\x94 here she kiss\'d it : then \xe2\x80\x94 \n\n" All good go with thee ! take it, Sir," and so ^^^ \n\nLaid the soft babe in his hard-mailed hands \n\nWho turn\'d half-round to Psyche as she sprang \n\nTo meet it, with an eye that swum in thanks ; \n\nThen felt it sound and whole from head to foot, \n\nAnd hugg\'d and never hugg\'d it close enough, \n\nAnd in her hunger mouth\'d and mumbled it. \n\nAnd hid her bosom with it ; after that \n\nPut on more calm and added suppliantly : \n\n" We two were friends : I go to mine own land \nFor ever : find some other : as for me ~^^ \n\nI scarce am fit for your great plans : yet speak to me, \nSay one soft word and let me part forgiven." \n\nBut Ida spoke not, rapt upon the child. \nThen Arac : " Ida \xe2\x80\x94 \'sdeath ! you blame the man ; \nYou wrong yourselves \xe2\x80\x94 the woman is so hard \nUpon the woman. Come, a grace to me ! \nI am your warrior ; I and mine have fought \nYour battle : kiss her ; take her hand, she ^veeps : \n\'Sdeath! I would sooner fight thrice o\'er than see it." \n\nBut Ida spoke not, gazing on the ground ; -^^ \n\nAnd reddening in the furrows of his chin. \nAnd moved beyond his custom, Gama said: \n\n\n\n186 Dead prime: dark hours preceding the dawn. \n202 Part: depart. \n\n\n\nPART VI 109 \n\n" I\'ve heard that there is iron in the blood. \nAnd I believe it. Not one word ? not one ? \nWhence drew you this steel temper? not from me, \nNot from your mother, now a saint with saints. \nShe said you had a heart \xe2\x80\x94 I heard her say it \xe2\x80\x94 \n\' Our Ida has a heart \' \xe2\x80\x94 just ere she died \xe2\x80\x94 \n* But see that some one with authority \nBe near her still \' ; and I \xe2\x80\x94 I sought for one \xe2\x80\x94 ^^^ \n\nAll people said she had authority\xe2\x80\x94 \nThe Lady Blanche : much profit ! Not one word ; \nNo ! tho\' your father sues : see how you stand \nStiff as Lot\'s wife, and all the good knights maim\'d, \nI trust that there is no one hurt to death, \nFor your wild whim: and was it then for this, \nWas it for this we gave our palace up, \nWhere we withdrew from summer heats and state, \nAnd had our wine and chess beneath the planes, \nAnd many a pleasant hour with her that\'s gone, -"** \nEre you were born to vex us ? Is it kind ? \nSpeak to her, I say : is this not she of whom. \nWhen first she came, all flush\'d you said to me, \nNow had you got a friend of your own age, \nNow could you share your thought; now should men \n\nsee \nTwo women faster welded in one love \nThan pairs of wedlock ? she you walk\'d with, she \nYou talk\'d with, whole nights long, up in the tower, \nOf sine and arc, spheroid and azimuth. \nAnd right ascension, Heaven knows what ; and now ^^^ \n\n224 Stiff as Lot\'s -wife. Lot\'s wife was turned into a pillar of salt. \n\n239 Sine: a term used in trigonometry. Arc: a portion of a curved \n\nline. Spheroid: a body nearly but not perfectly spherical. \nAcimuth: an arc of the horizon. \n\n240 Right ascension: an astronomical term. \n\n\n\nno THE PRINCESS \n\nA word, but one, one little kindly word, \n\nNot one to spare her : out upon you, flint ! \n\nYou love nor her, nor me, nor any ; nay, \n\nYou shame your mother\'s judgment too. Not one? \n\nYou will not? well \xe2\x80\x94 no heart have you, or such \n\nAs fancies like the vermin in a nut \n\nHave fretted all to dust and bitterness." \n\nSo said the small king moved beyond his wont. \n\nBut Ida stood nor spoke, drain\'d of her force \nBy many a varying influence and so long. -^"^ \n\nDown thro\' her limbs a drooping languor wept : \nHer head a little bent; and on her mouth \nA doubtful smile dwelt like a clouded moon \nIn a still water : then brake out my sire, \nLifting his grim head from my wounds : " O you, \nWoman, whom we thought woman even now. \nAnd were half fool\'d to let you tend our son, \nBecause he might have wish\'d it \xe2\x80\x94 but we see \nThe accomplice of your madness unforgiven, \nAnd think that you might mix his draught with \ndeath, ^co \n\nWhen your skies change again : the rougher hand \nIs safer: on to the tents: take up the Prince." \nHe rose, and while each ear was prick\'d to attend \nA tempest, thro\' the cloud that dimm\'d her broke \nA genial warmth and light once more, and shone \nThro\' glittering drops on her sad friend. \n\n" Come hither. \nO Psyche," she cried out, " embrace me, come. \nQuick while I melt ; make reconcilement sure \nWith one that cannot keep her mind an hour : \n\n246 Fancies: whims. \n\n\n\nPART VI 111 \n\nCome to the hollow heart they slander so ! ^^^ \n\nKiss and be friends, like children being chid ! \n/ seem no more: / want forgiveness too: \nI should have had to do with none but maids, \nThat have no links with men. Ah false but dear. \nDear traitor, too much loved, why? \xe2\x80\x94 why? \xe2\x80\x94 Yet see, \nBefore these kings we embrace you yet once more \nWith all forgiveness, all oblivion. \nAnd trust, not love, you less. \n\nAnd now, O Sire, \nGrant me your son, to nurse, to wait upon him, \nLike mine own brother. For my debt to him, -^^ \n\nThis nightmare weight of gratitude, I know it ; \nTaunt me no more : yourself and yours shall have \nFree adit ; we will scatter all our maids \nTill happier times each to her proper hearth : \nWhat use to keep them here \xe2\x80\x94 now? grant my prayer. \nHelp, father, brother, help ; speak to the king : \nThaw this male nature to some touch of that \nWhich kills me with myself, and drags me down \nFrom my fixt height to mob me up with all \nThe soft and milky rabble of womankind, ^^^ \n\nPoor weakling even as they are.\'* \n\nPassionate tears \nFollow\'d : the king replied not : Cyril said : \n** Your brother, Lady, \xe2\x80\x94 Florian, \xe2\x80\x94 ask for him \nOf your great Head \xe2\x80\x94 for he is wounded too \xe2\x80\x94 \nThat you may tend upon him with the Prince." \n" Ay, so," said Ida with a bitter smile, \n" Our laws are broken ; let him enter too." \n\n272 I seem- no more. That is, no more than a chidden child. \n\n283 Adit: access, entrance. \n\n298 She that sang, etc. See 1. 21, Part IV. \n\n\n\n112 THE PRINCESS \n\nThen Violet, she that sang the mournful song, \n\nAnd had a cousin tumbled on the plain, \n\nPetition\'d too for him. " Ay, so," she said, ^\xc2\xb0\xc2\xae \n\n*\' I stagger in the stream ; I cannot keep \n\nMy heart an eddy from the brawling hour : \n\nWe break our laws with ease, but let it be." \n\n" Ay, so?" said Blanche: " Amazed am I to hear \n\nYour Highness; but your Highness breaks with ease \n\nThe law your Highness did not make : \'t was I. \n\nI had been wedded wife, I knew mankind, \n\nAnd block\'d them out ; but these men came to woo \n\nYour Highness \xe2\x80\x94 verily I think to win." \n\nSo she, and turn\'d askance a wintry eye; ^^" \n\nBut Ida, with a voice that, like a bell \nToll\'d by an earthquake in a trembling tower, \nRang ruin, answer\'d full of grief and scorn : \n\n" Fling our doors wide ! all, all, not one, but all, \nNot only he, but by my mother\'s soul, \nWhatever man lies wounded, friend or foe. \nShall enter, if he will ! Let our girls flit. \nTill the storm die ! but had you stood by us, \nThe roar that breaks the Pharos from his base \nHad left us rock. She fain would sting us too, ^-^ \n\nBut shall not. Pass, and mingle with your likes. \nWe brook no further insult, but are gone." \n\nShe turn\'d ; the very nape of her white neck \nWas rosed with indignation : but the Prince \nHer brother came ; the king her father charm\'d \n\n319 The Pharos: a lighthouse on an island in the harbor of. Alex- \nandria: one of the seven wonders of the world. \n\n\n\nPART VI 113 \n\nHer wounded soul with words : nor did mine own \nRefuse her proffer, lastly gave his hand. \n\nThen us they lifted up, dead weights, and bare \nStraight to the doors : to them the doors gave way \nGroaning, and in the Vestal entry shriek\'d ^^^ \n\nThe virgin marble under iron heels : : \nAnd on they moved and gain\'d the hall, and there \nRested : but great the crush was, and each base. \nTo left and right, of those tall columns drown\'d \nIn silken fluctuation and the swarm \nOf female whisperers : at the further end \nWas Ida by the throne, the two great cats \nClose by her, like supporters on a shield, \nBow-back\'d with fear : but in the center stood \nThe common men with rolling eyes ; amazed ^*\xc2\xae \n\nThey glared upon the women, and aghast \nThe women stared at these, all silent, save \nWhen armor clash\'d or jingled, while the day, \nDescending, struck athwart the hall, and shot \nA flying splendor out of brass and steel, \nThat o\'er the statues leapt from head to head, \nNow fired an angry Pallas on the helm. \nNow set a wrathful Dian\'s moon on flame ; \nAnd now and then an echo started up. \nAnd shuddering fled from room to room, and died ^^\xc2\xae \nOf fright in far apartments. \n\nThen the voice \nOf Ida sounded, issuing ordinance : \nAnd me they bore up the broad stairs, and thro\' \n\n338 Supporters: in heraldry, representations of living creatures ac- \ncompanying an escutcheon, either holding it up or standing be- \nside it. \n\n352 Ordinance: directions; commands. \n\n\n\n114 THE PRINCESS \n\nThe long-laid galleries past a hundred doors \nTo one deep chamber shut from sound, and due \nTo languid limbs and sickness ; left me in it ; \nAnd others otherwhere they laid ; and all \nThat afternoon a sound arose of hoof \nAnd chariot, many a maiden passing home \nTill happier times ; but some were left of those \nHeld sagest, and the great lords out and in. \nFrom those two hosts that lav beside the wall, \nWalk\'d at their will, and everything was changed. \n\n\n\nVII \n\nAsk me no more: the moon may draw the sea; \n\nThe cloud may stoop from heaven and take the shape, \nWith fold to fold, of mountain or of cape; \n\nBut O too fond, v/hen have I answer\'d thee? \n\nAsk me no more. \n\nAsk me no more: what answer should I give? \nI love not hollow cheek or faded eye: \nYet, O my friend, I will not have thee die! \n\nAsk me no more, lest T should bid thee live; \n\nAsk me no more. \n\nAsk me no more: thy fate and mine are seal\'d: \nI strove against the stream and all in vain: \nLet the great river take me to the main: \n\nNo more, dear love, for at a touch I yield; \n\nAsk me no more. \n\n\n\nSo was their sanctuary violated, \n\nSo their fair college turn\'d to hospital ; \n\nAt first with all confusion : by and by \n\n255 Due: devoted. \n\n\n\nPART VII 115 \n\nSweet order lived again with other laws : \n\nA kindlier influence reign\'d ; and everywhere \n\nLow voices with the ministering hand \n\nHung round the sick : the maidens came, they talk\'d, \n\nThey sang, they read : till she not fair began \n\nTo gather light, and she that was became \n\nHer former beauty treble ; and to and fro ^^ \n\nWith books, with flowers, and with angel offices, \n\nLike creatures native unto gracious act, \n\nAnd in their own clear element, they moved. \n\nBut sadness on the soul of Ida fell, \nAnd hatred of her weakness, blent with shame. \nOld studies fail\'d ; seldom she spoke ; but oft \nClomb to the roofs, and gazed alone for hours \nOn that disastrous leaguer, swarms of men \nDarkening her female field : void was her use, \nAnd she as one that clim.bs a peak to gaze -** \n\nO\'er land and main, and sees a great black cloud \nDrag inward from the deeps, a wall of night, \nBlot out the slope of sea from verge to shore, \nAnd suck the blinding splendor from the sand, \nAnd quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn \nExpunge the world : so fared she gazing there ; \nSo blacken\'d all her world in secret, blank \nAnd waste it seem\'d and vain ; till down she came. \nAnd found fair peace once more among the sick. \n\n\n\n17 Clomh: climbed, wliich latter form the poet uses elsewhere. \n\n18 Leaguer: camp. \n\n19 Void 7vas her use: her occupation was done away with. \n23 Verge: horizon. \n\n25 Tarn: a mountain lake or pool. \n\n28 Expunge: obliterate; blot out. \n\n27 Her world: her dreams for women. \n\n\n\n116 THE PRINCESS \n\nAnd twilight dawn\'d ; and morn by morn the lark ^\xc2\xb0 \nShot up and shrill\'d in flickering gyres, but I \nLay silent in the muffled cage of life : \nAnd twilight gloom\'d; and broader-grown the bowers \nDrew the great night into themselves, and Heaven, \nStar after star, arose and fell ; but I, \nDeeper than those weird doubts could reach me, lay \nQuite sunder\'d from the moving Universe, \nNor knew what eye was on me, nor the hand \nThat nursed me, more than infants in their sleep. \n\nBut Psyche tended Florian : with her oft *** \n\nMelissa came ; for Blanche had gone, but left \nHer child among us, willing she should keep \nCourt-favor : here and there the small bright head, \nA light of healing, glanced about the couch, \nOr thro\' the parted silks the tender face \nPeep\'d, shining in upon the wounded man \nWith blush and smile, a medicine in themselves \nTo wile the length from languorous hours, and draw \nThe sting from pain; nor seem\'d it strange that soon \nHe rose up whole, and those fair charities ^^ \n\nJoin\'d at her side ; nor stranger seem\'d that hearts \nSo gentle, so employ\'d, should close in love. \nThan when two dewdrops on the petal shake \nTo the same sweet air and tremble deeper down, \nAnd slip at once all-fragrant into one. \n\nLess prosperously the second suit obtain\'d \nAt first with Psyche. Not tho.\' Blanche had sworn \nThat after that dark night among the fields \n\n31 Gyres: circles. \n\n50 Charities: her care of the wounded men. \n\n56 Obtain\'d: prevailed. \n\n\n\nPART VII 117 \n\nShe needs must wed him for her own good name ; \nNot tho\' he built upon the babe restored; *^*^ \n\nNor tho\' she liked him, yielded she, but fear\'d \nTo incense the Head once more ; till on a day \nWhen Cyril pleaded, Ida came behind \nSeen but of Psyche : on her foot she hung \nA moment, and she heard, at which her face \nA little flush \'d, and she past on ; but each \nAssumed from thence a half-consent involved \nIn stillness, plighted troth, and were at peace. \n\nNor only these: Love in the sacred halls \nHeld carnival at will, and flying struck "^^ \n\nWith showers of random sweet on maid and man, \nNor did her father cease to press my claim, \nNor did mine own now reconciled ; nor yet \nDid those twin brothers, risen again and whole ; \nNor Arac, satiate with his victory. \n\nBut I lay still, and with me oft she sat : \nThen came a change ; for sometimes I would catch \nHer hand in wild delirium, gripe it hard, \nAnd fling it like a viper off, and shriek, \n" You are not Ida " ; clasp it once again, *<* \n\nAnd call her Ida, tho\' I knew her not. \nAnd call her sweet, as if in irony, \nAnd call her hard and cold, which seem\'d a truth ; \nAnd still she fear\'d that I should lose my mind. \nAnd often she believed that I should die : \nTill out of long frustration of her care. \nAnd pensive tendance in the all-weary noons, \n\n60 Built upon: based his suit upon. \n\n67, 68 Involved in stillness: implied by silence. \n\n\n\n118 THE PRINCESS \n\nAnd watches in the dead, the dark, when clocks \n\nThrobb\'d thunder thro\' the palace floors, or call\'d \n\nOn flying Time from all their silver tongues \xe2\x80\x94 ^^ \n\nAnd out of memories of her kindlier days, \n\nAnd sidelong glances at my father\'s grief, \n\nAnd at the happy lovers heart in heart \xe2\x80\x94 \n\nAnd out of hauntings of my spoken love. \n\nAnd lonely listenings to my mutter\'d dream. \n\nAnd often feeling of the helpless hands. \n\nAnd wordless broodings on the wasted cheek \xe2\x80\x94 \n\nFrom all a closer interest flourish\'d up, \n\nTenderness touch by touch, and last, to these, \n\nLove, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears ^^^ \n\nBy some cold morning glacier ; frail at first \n\nAnd feeble, all unconscious of itself, \n\nBut such as gathered color day by day. \n\nLast I woke sane, but well-nigh close to death \nFor weakness: it was evening: silent light \nSlept on the painted walls, wherein were wrought \nTwo grand designs ; for on one side arose \nThe women up in wild revolt, and storm\'d \nAt the Oppian law. Titanic shapes, they cramm\'d \nThe forum, and half-crush\'d among the rest ^^^\' \n\n88 Dead: dead of night. \n\n109 TJie Oppian lazv: a law passed in Rome when Hannibal was \n\nthreatening the citj- in 215 B. C. It prohibited women from \nwearing rich garments and forbade their adorning themselves \nwith more than a certain amount of jewelry. When war had \nceased the women demanded the repeal of the law, but they \nwere supported by only one of the two consuls. They then \nresorted to riotous demonstrations, in which they persisted \ntill the repeal of the law in 195 B. C. Titanic: gigantic, super- \nhuman. \n\n110 Forum: a marketplace or public place in Rome where cases were \n\njudicially tried and orations delivered to the people. \n\n\n\nPART VII 119 \n\nA dwarf-like Cato cower\'d. On the other side \nHortensia spoke against the tax ; behind, \nA train of dames : by axe and eagle sat, \nWith all their foreheads drawn in Roman scowls, \nAnd half the wolf\'s-milk curdled in their veins, \nThe fierce triumvirs ; and before them paused \nHortensia, pleading : angry was her face. \n\nI saw the forms : I knew not where I was : \nThey did but look like hollow shows ; nor more \nSweet Ida : palm to palm she sat : the dew ^^^ \n\nDwelt in her eyes, and softer all her shape \nAnd rounder seem\'d : I moved ; I sigh\'d : a touch \nCame round my wrist, and tears upon my hand: \nThen all for languor and self-pity ran \nMine down my face, and with what life I had, \nAnd like a flower that cannot all unfold, , \nSo drenched it is with tempest, to the sun, \nYet, as it may, turns toward him, I on her \nFixt my faint eyes, and utter\'d whisperingly : \n\n"If you be, what I think you, some sweet dream, ^^^ \nI would but ask you to fulfil yourself ; \nBut if you be that Ida whom I knew, \nI ask you nothing: only, if a dream, \nSweet dream, be perfect. I shall die to-night. \nStoop down and seem to kiss me ere I die." \n\n111 Cato: a Roman statesman who was made consul in 195 B. C. \n\nHe opposed the repeal of the law mentioned above. \n\n112 Hortensia: a Roman matron who spoke so eloquently against a \n\ncertain tax levied upon, the women of Rome that it was removed. \n\n113 Axe and eagle. The axe was the emblem of the civil and the eagle \n\nthat of the military authority of Rome. \n115 Wolf\'s-milk. An allusion to tlie tradition that Romulus and \nRemus, the mythical founders of Rome, were suckled by a wolf. \n\n\n\n130 THE PRINCESS \n\nI could no more, but lay like one in trance, \nThat hears his burial talk\'d of by his friends, \nAnd cannot speak, nor move, nor make one sign, \nBut lies and dreads his doom. She turn\'d ; she paused ; \nShe stoop\'d ; and out of languor leapt a cry ; ^*^ \n\nLeapt fiery Passion from the brinks of death ; \nAnd I believed that in the living world \nMy spirit closed with Ida\'s at the lips ; \nTill back I fell, and from mine arms she rose \nGlowing all over noble shame; and all \nHer falser self slipt from her like a robe. \nAnd left her woman, lovelier in her mood \nThan in her mold that other, when she came \nFrom barren deeps to conquer all with love. \nAnd down the streaming crystal dropt; and she ^^\xc2\xae \nFar-fleeted by the purple island-sides, \nNaked, a double light in air and wave, \nTo meet her Graces, where they deck\'d her out \nFor worship without end ; nor end of mine, \nStatehest, for thee ! but mute she glided forth. \nNor glanced behind her, and I sank and slept, \nFiird thro\' and thro\' with love, a happy sleep. \n\nDeep in the night I woke : she, near me, held \nA volume of the Poets of her land : \nThere to herself, all in low tones, she read : ^^^ \n\n"Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white; \nNor waves the cypress in the palace walk; \nNor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font: \nThe fire-fly wakens: waken thou with me. \n\n\n\n148 That other: Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who -"as born of the \n\nsea-foam. \n151 Far-Heeted: floated far. \n\n\n\n\n\n\nPART VII 121 \n\n" Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost, \nAnd like a ghost she glimmers on to mc. \n\n" Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars, \nAnd all thy heart lies open unto me, \n\n" Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves \nA shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me. ^\'^^ \n\n" Now folds the lily all her sweetness up, \nAnd slips into the bosom of the lake: \nSo fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip \nInto my bosom and be lost in me." \n\nI heard her turn the page; she found a small \nSweet Idyl, and once more, as low, she read: \n\n" Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height \n\nWhat pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang), \n\nIn height and cold, the splendor of the hills? \n\nBut cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease ^^^ \n\nTo glide a sunbeam by the blasted pine, \n\nTo sit a star upon the sparkling spire; \n\nAnd come, for Love is of the valley, come. \n\nFor Love is of the valley, come thou down \n\nAnd find him; by the happy threshold, he, \n\nOr hand in hand with Plenty in the maize. \n\nOr red with spirted purple of the vats. \n\nOf foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk \n\nWith Death and Morning on the Silver Horns, \n\nNor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine, i^\'\'* \n\nNor find him dropt upon the firths of ice, \n\n167 Dana\'c to the stars. That is, open to their influence. Danae, \ndaughter of the King of Argos, was loved by Zeus, who, when \nthe maiden\'s father shut her up in a dungeon, made his way \ninto the prison in the form of a shower of gold. \n\n189 With Death and Morning on the Silver Horns. " Morning walks \non the mountains here . . . and Death is her companion be- \ncause life has no home on those \' Alpine summits cold,\' or \nmust face Death in attempting to scale them." \xe2\x80\x94 Rolfe. \n\n191 Firths of ice: glaciers. \n\n\n\n122 THE PRINCESS \n\nThat huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls \n\nTo roll the torrent out of dusky doors: \n\nBut follow; let the torrent dance thee down \n\nTo find him in the valley; let the wild \n\nLean-headed eagles yelp alone, and leave \n\nThe monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill \n\nTheir thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke, \n\nThat like a broken purpose waste in air: \n\nSo waste not thou; but come; for all the vales \n\nAwait thee; azure pillars of the hearth \n\nArise to thee; the children call, and I \n\nThy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound, \n\nSweeter thy A-oice, but every sound is sweet; \n\nMyriads of rivulets hurrying thro\' the lawn, \n\nThe moan of doves in immemorial elms, \n\nAnd murmuring of innumerable bees."* \n\nSo she low-toned ; while with shut eyes I lav \nListening, then look\'d. Pale was the perfect face ; \nThe bosom with long sighs labor\'d ; and meek \nSeem\'d the full lips, and mild the luminous eyes. \nAnd the voice trembled and the hand. She said \nBrokenly, that she knew it, she had fail\'d \nIn sweet humility ; had fail\'d in all ; \nThat all her labor was but as a block \nLeft in the quarry; but she still were loth. \nShe still were loth to yield herself to one \nThat wholly scorn\'d to help their equal rights \nAgainst the sons of men and barbarous laws. \nShe pray\'d me not to judge their cause from her \xe2\x96\xa0 \nThat wrong\'d it, sought far less for truth than power \nIn knowledge : something wild within her breast, \nA greater than all knowledge, beat her down. \n\n\n\n201 Asure pillars of the hearth:, columns of smoke rising from tl>e \n\ncottages. \n216 Were: would be. \n\n\n\nPART VII 123 \n\nAnd she had nursed me there from week to week: \n\nMuch had she learnt in Httle time. In part \n\nIt was ill counsel had misled the girl \n\nTo vex true hearts : yet was she but a girl \xe2\x80\x94 \n\n" Ah fool, and made myself a queen of farce ! \n\nWhen comes another such? never, I think, \n\nTill the sun drop, dead, from the signs." \n\nHer voice -^\xc2\xb0 \nChoked, and her forehead sank upon her hands, \nAnd her great heart thro\' all the faultful past \nWent sorrowing in a pause I dared not break ; \nTill notice of a change in the dark world \nWas lispt about the acacias, and a bird. \nThat early woke to feed her little ones. \nSent from a dewy breast a cry for light : \nShe moved, and at her feet the volume fell. \n\n" Blame not thyself too much," I said, *\' nor blame \nToo much the sons of men and barbarous laws ; -^^ \nThese were the rough ways of the world till now. \nHenceforth thou hast a helper, me, that know \nThe woman\'s cause is man\'s ; they rise or sink \nTogether, dwarf \'d or godlike, bond or free : \nFor she that out of Lethe scales with man \nThe shining steps of Nature, shares with man \nHis nights, his days, moves with him to one goal, \nStays all the fair young planet in her hands \xe2\x80\x94 \nIf she be small, slight-natured, miserable. \nHow shall men grow ? but work no more alone ! \'^*^ \n\n\n\n230 Signs. That is, signs of the Zodiac. \n234 A change. That is, the coming of the dawn. \n\n245 Lethe: the river of oblivion, contact with the waters of which \ncaused forgetfulness of one\'s previous existence. \n\n\n\n124 THE PRINCESS \n\nOur place is much : as far as in us lies \n\nWe two will serve them both in aiding her \xe2\x80\x94 \n\nWill clear away the parasitic forms \n\nThat seem to keep her up but drag her down \xe2\x80\x94 \n\n\\\\^ill leave her space to burgeon out of all \n\nWithin her \xe2\x80\x94 let her make herself her own \n\nTo give or keep, to live and learn and be \n\nAll that not harms distinctive womanhood. \n\nFor woman is not undevelopt man, \n\nBut diverse : could we make her as the man, -^^ \n\nSweet Love were slain : his dearest bond is this, \n\nNot like to like, but like in difference. \n\nYet in the long years liker must they grow ; \n\nThe man be more of woman, she of man ; \n\nHe gain in sweetness and in moral height. \n\nNor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world : \n\nShe mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, \n\nNor lose the childlike in the larger mind ; \n\nTill at the last she set herself to man. \n\nLike perfect music unto noble words; ^^^ \n\nAnd so these twain, upon the skirts of Time, \n\nSit side by side, full-summ\'d in all their powers, \n\nDispensing harvest, sowing the to-be. \n\nSelf-reverent each and reverencing each. \n\nDistinct in individualities, \n\nBut like each other even as those who love. \n\nThen comes the statelier Eden back to men ; \n\nThen reign the world\'s great bridals, chaste and calm ; \n\nThen springs the crowning race of humankind. \n\nMay these things be !" \n\n\n\n251 Our place is much: our position in life will help much. \n255 Burgeon: to put forth buds. \n261 His: Love\'s. \n\n\n\nPART VII 125 \n\nSighing she spoke : " I fear ^so \nThey will not." \n\n" Dear, but let us type them now \nIn our own lives, and this proud watchword rest \nOf equal ; seeing either sex alone \nIs half itself, and in true marriage lies \nNor equal, nor unequal: each fulfills \nDefect in each, and always thought in thought, \nPurpose in purpose, will in will, they grow, \nThe single pure and perfect animal, \nThe two-ceird heart, beating, with one full stroke. \nLife." \n\nAnd again sighing she spoke : " A dream -^^ \nThat once was mine ! what woman taught you this ? " \n\n" Alone," I said, " from earlier than I know, \nImmersed in rich foreshadowings of the world, \nI loved the woman : he, that doth not, lives \nA drowning life, besotted in sweet self, \nOr pines in sad experience worse than death, \nOr keeps his wing\'d affections dipt with crime : \nYet was there one thro\' whom I loved her, one \nNot learned, save in gracious household ways, \nNot perfect, nay, but full of tender wants, ^\xc2\xb0^ \n\nNo angel, but a dearer being, all dipt \nIn angel instincts, breathing Paradise, \nInterpreter between the Gods and men. \nWho look\'d all native to her place, and yet \nOn tiptoe seem\'d to touch upon a sphere \nToo gross to tread, and all male minds perforce \nSway\'d to her from their orbits as they moved, \nAnd girdled her with music. Happy he \n\n281 Type them: exemplify. \n\n\n\n126 THE PRINCESS \n\nWith such a mother ! faith in womankind \n\nBeats with his blood, and trust in all things high "^\xc2\xb0 \n\nComes easy to him, and tho\' he trip and fall \n\nlie shall not blind his soul with clay." \n\n" But I," \nSaid Ida, tremulously, " so all unlike \xe2\x80\x94 \nIt seems you love to cheat yourself with words : \nThis mother is your model. I have heard \nOf your strange doubts : they well might be ; I seem \nA mockery to my own self. Never, Prince ; \nYou cannot love me." \n\n" Nay, but thee." I said, \n\'* From yearlong poring on thy pictured eyes. \nEre seen I loved, and loved thee seen, and saw ^-^ \nThee woman thro\' the crust of iron moods \nThat mask\'d thee from men\'s reverence up, and forced \nSweet love on pranks of saucy boyhood : now. \nGiven back to life, to life indeed, thro\' thee, \nIndeed I love : the new day comes, the light \nDearer for night, as dearer thou for faults \nLived over : lift thine eyes ; my doubts are dead, \nMy haunting sense of hollow shows : the change, \nThis truthful change in thee has kill\'d it. Dear, \nLook up, and let thy nature strike on mine, "^" \n\nLike yonder morning on the blind half-world : \nApproach and fear not ; breathe upon my brows ; \nIn that fine air I tremble, all the past \nMelts mist-like into this bright hour, and this \nIs morn to more, and all the rich to-come \nReels, as the golden Autumn woodland reels \nAthwart the smoke of burning weeds. Forgive me, \nI waste my heart in signs : let be. My bride, \nMy wife, my life! O we will walk this world, \n\n\n\nPART VII 127 \n\nYoked in all exercise of noble end, ^*^ \n\nAnd so thro\' those dark gates across the wild \nThat no man knows. Indeed I love thee : come, \nYield thyself up: my hopes and thine are one: \nAccomplish thou my manhood and thyself; \nLay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me." \n\nCONCLUSION \n\nSo closed our tale, of which I give you all \n\nThe random scheme as wildly as it rose. \n\nThe words are mostly mine : for when we ceased \n\nThere came a minute\'s pause, and Walter said, \n\n" I wish she had not yielded !" then to me, \n\n" What if you drest it up poetically !" \n\nSo pray\'d the men, the women ; I gave assent : \n\nYet how to bind the scatter\'d scheme of seven \n\nTogether in one sheaf ? What style could suit ? \n\nThe men required that I should give throughout ** \n\nThe sort of mock-heroic gigantesque. \n\nWith which we banter\'d little Lilia first ; \n\nThe women \xe2\x80\x94 and perhaps they felt their power. \n\nFor something in the ballads which they sang, \n\nOr in their silent influence as they sat. \n\nHad ever seem\'d to wrestle with burlesque, \n\nAnd drove us, last, to quite a solemn close \xe2\x80\x94 \n\nThey hated banter, wish\'d for something real, \n\nA gallant fight, a noble princess \xe2\x80\x94 why \n\nNot make her true-heroic \xe2\x80\x94 true-sublime? ~^ \n\nOr all, they said, as earnest as the close? \n\nWhich yet with such a framework scarce could be. \n\n22 Such a fuinczuork. That is, with the strange mixture of inci- \ndents and ideas of which it was composed. \n\n\n\n128 THE PRINCESS \n\nThen rose a little feud betwixt the two, \n\nBetwixt the mockers and the realists ; \n\nAnd I, betwixt them both, to please them both, \n\nAnd yet to give the story as it rose, \n\nI moved as in a strange diagonal, \n\nAnd maybe neither pleased myself nor them \n\nBut LiHa pleased me, for she took no part \nIn our dispute : the sequel of the tale ^ \n\nHad touch\'d her ; and she sat, she pluck\'d the grass. \nShe flung it from her, thinking : last, she fixt \nA showery glance upon her aunt, and said, \n" You \xe2\x80\x94 tell us what we are " \xe2\x80\x94 who might have told, \nFor she was cramm\'d with theories out of books, \nBut that there rose a shout : the gates were closed \nAt sunset, and the crowd were swarming now, \nTo take their leave, about the garden rails. \n\nSo I and some went out to these : we climb\'d \nThe slope to Vivian-place, and turning saw * \n\nThe happy valleys, half in light, and half \nFar-shadowing from the west, a land of peace ; \nGray halls alone among their massive groves ; \nTrim hamlets ; here and there a rustic tower \nHalf-lost in belts of hop and breadths of wheat ; , \nThe shimmering glimpses of a stream ; the seas ; \nA red sail, or a white ; and far beyond, \nImagined more than seen, the skirts of France. \n\n" Look there, a garden !" said my college friend, \nThe Tory member\'s elder son, " and there ! ^ \n\n49 A garden. He refers to the English country as a whole. \n\n50 And there. Referring to France. \n\n\n\nCONCLUSION 129 \n\nGod bless the narrow sea which keeps her off, \n\nAnd keeps our Britain, whole within herself, \n\nA nation yet, the rulers and the ruled \xe2\x80\x94 \n\nSome sense of duty, something of a faith, \n\nSome reverence for the laws ourselves have made, \n\nSome patient force to change them when we will, \n\nSome civic manhood firm against the crowd \xe2\x80\x94 \n\nBut yonder, whiff ! there comes a sudden heat. \n\nThe gravest citizen seems to lose his head, \n\nThe king is scared, the soldier will not fight, \xc2\xae\xc2\xb0 \n\nThe little boys begin to shoot and stab, \n\nA kingdom topples over with a shriek \n\nLike an old woman, and down rolls the world \n\nIn mock heroics stranger than our own ; \n\nRevolts, republics, revolutions, most \n\nNo graver than a schoolboys\' barring out ; \n\nToo comic for the solemn things they are, \n\nToo solemn for the comic touches in them, \n\nLike our wild Princess with as wise a dream \n\nAs some of theirs \xe2\x80\x94 ^God bless the narrow seas ! ^\xc2\xb0 \n\nI wish they were a whole Atlantic broad." \n\n" Have patience," I replied, " ourselves are full \nOf social wrong; and maybe wildest dreams \nAre but the needful preludes of the truth : \nFor me, the genial day, the happy crowd, \nThe sport half-science, fill me with a faith, \nThis fine old world of ours is but a child \nYet in the go-cart. Patience ! Give it time \nTo learn its limbs : there is a hand that guides." \n\n51 The narrow sea: the Straits of Dover. \n58 Yonder: in France. \n\n66 A schoolboys\' barring out. That is, a schoolboys\' barring out, in \nsport, of a master from his classroom. \n\n\n\n130 THE PRINCESS \n\nIn such discourse we gain\'d the garden rails. \nAnd there we saw Sir Walter where he stood, \nBefore a tower of crimson holly-oaks, \nAmong six boys, head under head, and look\'d \nNo little lily-handed baronet he, \nA great broad-shoulder\'d genial Englishman, \nA lord of fat prize-oxen and of sheep, \nA raiser of huge melons and of pine, \nA patron of some thirty charities, \nA pamphleteer on guano and on grain, \nA quarter-sessions chairman, abler none ; \nFair-hair\'d and redder than a windy morn ; \nNow shaking hands with him, now him, of those \nThat stood the nearest \xe2\x80\x94 now address\'d to speech \xe2\x80\x94 \nWho spoke few words and pithy, such as closed \nWelcome, farewell, and welcome for the year \nTo follow : a shout rose again, and made \nThe long line of the approaching rookery swerve \nFrom the elms, and shook the branches of the deer \nFrom slope to slope thro\' distant ferns, and rang \nBeyond the bourn of sunset ; O, a shout \nMore joyful than the city-roar that hails \nPremier or king ! Why should not these great Sirs \nGive up their parks some dozen times a year \nTo let the people breathe ? So thrice they cried, \nI likewise, and in groups they stream\'d away. \n\n\n\n83 Head under head: each one a head shorter than the one next him. \n\n87 Pine: pineapples. \n\n90 Quarter-sessions : criminal court held quarterly. \n\n94 Closed: included. \n\n%1 Rookery: flock of rooks. \n\n100 Bourn: boundary. \n\n\n\nCONCLUSION 131 \n\nBut we went back to the Abbey, and sat on, \nSo much the gathering darkness charm\'d : we sat \nBut spoke not, rapt in nameless reverie, \nPerchance upon the future man : the walls \nBlacken\'d about us, bats wheel\'d, and owls whoop\'d, ^^\xc2\xae \nAnd gradually the powers of the night. \nThat range above the region of the wind. \nDeepening the courts of twilight broke them up \nThro\' all the silent spaces of the worlds. \nBeyond all thought into the Heaven of Heavens. \n\nLast little Lilia, rising quietly. \nDisrobed the glimmering statue of Sir Ralph \nFrom those rich silks, and home well-pleased we went. \n\n\n\nSTUDY QUESTIONS \n\nThe following questions and their application to "The \nPrincess "are an attempt to solve the problem of providing \nwork for the student who is making preparation of a les- \nson in literature. It is a method that has been in suc- \ncessful use in the writer\'s classes for a number of years, \nand it is believed that it has the following advantages \nover other methods which employ outlines or independent \nquestions: It is more flexible, since it gives any teacher \nopportunity to vary the work easily by asking pupils \nto prepare the lesson only on such questions as may \nseem to be of more interest or value for the class in \nhand. The material provided is abundant for such vari- \nation of the work with different classes. Further, it has \nthe effect of organizing the pupil\'s thinking on the sub- \nject, because it asks him to attack again and again the \nimportant problems of the classic he is studying. Each \ntime he answers a certain question he is gathering ma- \nterial for a final generalization. This is the more impor- \ntant, because the teaching of literature is at all times in \ndanger of becoming loose and inconclusive. \n\nThe method of use of the questions is briefly as fol- \nlows: The thirty-one general questions are to be an- \nswered over and over again as they are applied to par- \nticular lines of the poem. For instance, the numbers \n10-24: 13, 24 indicate that for lines ten to twenty-four the \npupil will answer questions thirteen and twenty-four. \nThe numbers preceding the colon are always the line \nnumbers of the poem, those following the colon the num- \nbers of the questions that are to be answered for those \nlines. \n\nThe long string of numbers which this method pre- \nsents may look forbidding to the teacher who has not tried \nit, but, in spite of the appearance of coldness that they \ngive, the work will be found very much alive. A method \n\n132 \n\n\n\nSTUDY QUESTIONS 133 \n\nthat makes pupils think and establish right conclusions \nof their own in place of accepting the conclusions of \nothers, will create interest ultimately, even though at first \nglance it may seem mechanical. \n\nGENERAL QUESTIONS ON "THE PRINCESS" \n(Copyright, 1905, by Lewis Worthington Smith.) \n\n1 What phase of the author\'s feeling for life or atti- \ntude toward it do you find here? \n\n2 What suggestion of the author\'s understanding of \nthe relation between man and woman do you find here? \n\n3 What method of description does the author employ \nhere? \n\n4 Do you find here any lines of commonplace or any \nof imaginative or emotional heightening? Any lines \nworth remembering? \n\n5 What is the connection in thought and feeling be- \ntween the song and the part in which it is included? \nWhat in it is particularly effective? \n\n6 What is the meaning here? \n\n7 Read the notes and be prepared to comment on these \nlines. \n\n8 What do you know of any of the characters here? \nDoes character develop, or do you merely know more \nabout the persons of the story? Is the showing of char- \nacter consistent or not? \n\n9 What do you find here of Tennyson\'s feeling for \nwomanhood? \n\n10 Is there anything incredible in the situation here? \nHow made plausible? \n\n11 How is character shown here? \n\n12 What preparation here for the climax or catastrophe \nor for the development of the struggle of the contending \nforces? \n\n13 What concrete picture does the author wish you \nto get here? For what purpose does he wish you to vis- \nualize this? \n\n14 What expectation regarding the outcome does the \nauthor raise here, and why? Is there anything dramat- \nic in the situation? \n\n\n\n134 THE PRINCESS \n\n15 Explain historical or other allusions. \n\n16 What is there striking in diction, felicitous or oth- \nerwise, here? \n\n17 What metrical peculiarity, felicity or variation do \nyou notice here? How justified or accounted for? \n\n18 What mood is shown here, and how is it consistent \nwith character? \n\n19 Be able to give meanings of all words here. \n\n20 How is this harmonious and in keeping with the \natmosphere of the poem, or inharmonious and not in \nkeeping? \n\n21 How does this emphasize the general tone of the \npoem? \n\n22 Comment on the figures here. \n\n23 What is the nature of the sentiments appealed to \nhere? \n\n24 Do you notice anything in the tone-color deserving \ncomment here? \n\n25 What words in these lines are not of Anglo-Saxon \norigin? Of these, how many are derivatives of Latin \nwords with which you are familiar? \n\n26 What is the meter here, and how is it fitting? \n\n27 What does Tennyson understand as the sphere of \nwoman? \n\n28 What is there in any way striking in the way in \nwhich this is said? \n\n29 Make an outline of the story so far. \n\n30 Do you find any separate episodes or digressions \nso far? If so, what part do they play in relation to the \nwhole? \n\n31 Has the story narrative movement and sweep or not? \nIf not, what in the method of telling or in the things \npresented keeps it from having such sweep? \n\nAPPLICATION OF PRECEDING QUESTIONS \n\nPrologue, 10-24:13, 24. 14-17:6. 20-21:6. 25-26:15 \n40-41:13. 49:17. 53:7. 55-88:13. 56-57:7, 6. 69-70: \n16. 91-94:7. 100-105:18. 107-110:20. 110-117:18. 118- \n216:20. 127-138:8. 137-138:13,18. 139-148:24,20. 148- \n151:13, 18. 152-154:9. 161:7. 163:6. 164-165:22. 166- \n\n\n\nSTUDY QUESTIONS 135 \n\n168:18. 179-187:6. 190-194:18, 20. 196-201: 19. 210- \n211:6. 212-216:6, 18. 220-235:20. 238:22. \n\nParti. 1-4:8. 3-4:6. 7-13:6. 12-18:7. 19-28:19. 20-30: \n8. 30-36: 10. 45-49: 8, 25. 57-59: 22. 57-66: 8, 18, 25. 67-72: \n8. 80-85:8. 85:6. 85-88:8. 90-99:8, 18, 21. 99:12. 100- \n101:6. 106-112:19, 16, 25. 113-115:13, 22, 8. 116-118:6, \n20. 20:8. 121-127:8. 131-133:24. 135-137:6. 142-148:8. \n160-165:19. 167-170:13. 174-175:24. 174-178:25. 178-182: \n8. 192-202:19. 206-210:13,20. 213-218:20,21,17. 222- \n226:2. 233-234:6. 237-240:12,15. 242-245:20. \n\nPart II. Song: 26, 23, 17, 5. 5:22. 8-15:13, 20, 19. \n18-20:19. 18-27:3, 8. 28-33:10. 34-37:14, 21. 39-41:24. \n39-52:18. 53-54:18. 55-60:25. 60-71:15. 71-74:6. 74- \n84: 1. 96-100: 15. 110-120: 15. 122-124: 22. 126-140: 6. \n140-150:15. 153-155:22, 18. 155-164:6, 4. 171-178: \n14. 184-187:18, 8. 193-194:18, 8. 194-199:18. 200- \n206:18. 200-216:8. 219-227:23,12,14. 221-224:24. 228- \n237 : 23. 238-241 : 23, 8. 242-249 : 23, 8. 250-255 : 13. 259- \n261:23, 8. 261-264:18, 15. 263-271:4. 272-279:18. 280- \n290:18,8. 290-298:28,14. 299-307:13,22,18,8. 308-314: \n18, 8. 315-321:18. 321-325:15. 326-328:18. 329-335:18. \n341-346:13, 18, 21. 351-363:28. 367-325:2, 9. 374-387:6, \n18. 387-391:19. 391-399:6,18. 400-406:19,18,6. 411-416: \n13. 417-424:15. 425-428:3,11,8. 428-440:13. 442-446:8. \n450-455:24. \n\nPart III. Song: 5, 16, 24, 26. 1-2:22. 6. 1-6:24. 5- \n6:19. 7-25:18,8. 26-49:14. 33-36:19. 50-58:18,15. 59: \n8. 62-68: 11, 8. 72-74: 6, 19. 78: 19. 81-87: 18, 8. 88-100: \n8. 89-91:6. 96-98:6. 96-100:13, 15. \n122:12, 14. 120-122:28. 125-130:19. \n8. 149:8. 157-159:24. 162-165:13. \n26, 12. 184-189:18, 14. 191-197:18. \n214:15, 18. 205-208:6. 221-229:12. \n239:1. 240-254:11,18. 266-271:15. \n6. 283-286:6, 15, 19. 289-299:6, 19. \n6. 309-313:6. 315-321:13. 323-331:28, 15. 324-327:13. \n332-335: 15. 336-342: 28. Part III as a whole: 29, 30, 31. \n\nPart IV. Song: 5, 17, 24, 26. 1-2:6. 4:22. 5-8:19. \n12-17:13. 18-20:22. 21-25:24, 28. 26-30:22. 31-35:22. \n\n\n\n101-106:4, \n\n\n24. 107- \n\n\n131-136:4. \n\n\n137-140: \n\n\n165-173:21. \n\n\n175-180: \n\n\n201-208:27, \n\n\n8. 209- \n\n\n230-232: 18, \n\n\n8. 236- \n\n\n272-278: 13. \n\n\n280-282: \n\n\n303-315:8. \n\n\n306-309: \n\n\n\n136 THE PRINCESS \n\n21-40:5,17,24,26. 41-43:22. 44-69:11,18. 49-65:6. 53- \n57: 22, 1. 57-60:11, 18, 15. 59-65:1, 22, 4. 72-74:10, 12, \n14, 18. 75-98:5, 17, 24, 26. 100:15. 104:15. 104-110:11, \n\n18, 19. 110:15. 116-133:15, 19. 136-141:11, 18. 145- \n146:11, 18. 147-152:24. 154:22. 159-162:24. 160-167: \n11, 18, 2, 12. 166:6. 176-178:11, 18, 19. 182-188:13, 19. \n189-194:18. 194-195:6,24. 230-238:8,11,22. 241-248:22, \n24. 250:15. 252-256:22, 7. 258-263:27, 13, 15. 264-270: \n13. 274-276:15. 281-283:22. 280-339:18,8. 290-294:15, \n24. 330-339:14. 340-343:18, 8, 7. 344-465:13. 343-353: \n8, 11. 340-357:14. 352:15. 357-360:13, 22. 360-367:8, \n22,4. 365-367:6. 367-378:18,14. 379-386:8. 387-397:8. \n399-403:8, 16, 14. 404-407:6, 22. 408-419:16, 19, 4, 15. \n422:19, 6. 420-448:14. 425-429:16, 19. 419-442:4. 439- \n443:7,8,18. 443-448:7. 449-453:13,22. 456-460:13.456- \n468:18, 14, 12. 466-468:7. 469-476:13, 18. 480:6. 484: \n\n19, 494-500:19,18. 501-505:13,22,18. 506-510:18. 514- \n523:19, 18. 524-527:7. 527-534:20. 535-542:7. 554-561: \n5. 562-568:18. 570-579:21. \n\nPart V. 1-3:6,16. 5-10:6,19. 10-16:24,22. 10-21:13. \n24-35:13. 39:6. 32-35:18. 35-41:6,8,11. 37-39:6,19,25. \n50-59:14,18. 57-59:22,13. 60-65:8,11,18. 68-71:22.72- \n76:18. 79-91:8. 82-96:4, 16. 97-102:14. 109-115:18, 8, \n22. 115-119:18, 8. 120-133:12, 14. 2. 130-143:4, 16. \n143-146:6,8,11. 146-150:2. 151-164:2,4,16. 164-172:18. \n174-180: 1, 2, 27. 181-182: 6. 181-197: 1, 2, 27, 4, 16, 28. 190- \n197:19. 190-192:6. 197-208:18,8. 202-205:8,3. 226-235:16. \n231-232:11. 237-244:17, 24. 247-254:13, 22, 15. 258-265: \n13. 281-284: 7,15. 308-310:22,16,4. 318-320:6,8.332- \n341:16,22,24,13. 340:7. 354-357:15. 364-374:15,6.374- \n376:6. 386-392:18, 8. 396-399: 18, 8. 404-413:6. 414- \n419:18. 420-427:7, 18, 8, 12, 14. 428-434:18. 435-440: \n2,27. 441-444:6,22.27. 445-449:27. 459:7. 458-467:18, \n\n20, 21. 472-481:3, 18, 13. 482-493:4, 16, 17, 7. 496-499: \n18. 499-502:15. 502-508:18, 14. 509-511:6. 509-519:22, \n16, 17, 4. 520-531:31. \n\nPart VI. Song: 5, 17, 24, 26. 6-13:14. 10-13:8. 14- \n16:15. 17-25:22. 37-42:7. 5, 20, 21. 48-52: 16. 53-57: \n18,8. 62-66:22,13. 66-67:12. 81-91:14,4. 83:6. 92:18. \n93-111:14, 23. 106-121:24, 14, 13. 117:7. 123-146:12, 14. \n\n\n\nSTUDY QUESTIONS 137 \n\n134-137:13, 18. 140-146:18, 8. 154-160:19. 160-167:23. \n167-171:18,8. 172-175:18. 176-180:18. 185-189:18. 199- \n202:18. 203-209:18, 8. 213-221:8. 222-231:18, 8. 237- \n242:19. 242-247:18. 249-255:13, 11, 18. 263-266:6. 270- \n278:18, 14. 287-291:18. 304-309:18, 8, 14, 7. 310-313: \n18. 314-317:18. 318-322:18. 328-331:24. 344-351:15, 13, \n4, 16. 357-363:14, 23. \n\nPart VIL Song: 5, 17, 26. 8-13:4, 6. 13-19:19. 20- \n29:22. 25-29:19. 30-32:19. 30-39:4. 49-55:14, 4, 16. \n80-98:16, 17, 4. 97-103:16, 17, 4. 109-117:15. 120-125: \n18, 16, 17, 4, 23. 140-146:4, 17, 18. 147-154:22, 6, 15. 124- \n125:6. 171-174:5. 177-207:26, 5. 203-207:1, 24. 208- \n222:13, 18, 8. 223-230:18, 12, 14. 231-238:16, 17, 4. 234: \n7. 239-242:18. 243-250:9. 255-272:2, 9, 27. 273-280:2, \n4. 282-290:2, 9, 27. 292-297:9, 8. 298-312:9, 16, 17, 14. \n313-318:18,8. 320-323:6. 324-329:6. 330-337:16, 17,22, \n4. 337-345:16,17,4. 340-342:6. \n\nConclusion. 17-28: 21. 29-33: 18. 39-46: 13. 49-71 : 30, \n7. 72-79:1. 80-100:20. 100-105:1. 106-115:20, 21, 16. \n116-118:21. \n\nFINAL REVIEW QUESTIONS. \n\nHow does the poem gain or lose by being told in the \nfirst person? Is the plot a good one for the development \nof the question? How so or how not? What as deter- \nmining the outcome is the important incident? Are there \nany minor incidents that could be omitted? Why or why \nnot? Is the final effect serious or burlesque? Why did \nTennyson call the poem a medley? What is gained or \nlost by the manner of telling the story in the words of \nspeakers talking idly? What new development of the \nquestion of woman\'s place in society does the poem pre- \nsent? What poetic qualities seem to you most notice- \nable in Tennyson? How significant is the poem in its \nethical teaching? How have characters been chosen for \nthe play of conflicting emotions? What is the relation \nof the setting of the story to the story itself? \n\n\n\nA New, Revised and Enlarged Edition of \n\nWinchell\'s Orthography,Etyttiology \nand Punctuation \n\nUNDER ORTHOEPY IS TREATED -Diacritical Marks, \nVowel Sounds, Classification of Consonants, Sounds of \nthe Consonants, Rules for the Division of Words into \nSyllables, Accent, Articulation, List of Words often Mis- \npronounced. \n\nIN ORTHOGRAPHY\xe2\x80\x94 Rules for Spelling, Formation of \nthe Plural Nouns, Synonyms, Homonyms, Vowels, Accent, \nArticulation, all fully discussed. \n\nETYMOLOGY\xe2\x80\x94 The Use of the Dictionary, Prefixes. \nSuffiixes, Roots, Derivations, etc. \n\nPUNCTUATION \xe2\x80\x94 General Rules, Special Rules, Marks of \nParenthesis and Brackets, The Hyphen, Capital Letters, \nAbbreviations. \n\nThere is also added several pages of words frequently \nmis-spelled. \n\nThe matter contained in this volume has been carefully \nselected. Complete rules given under the different head- \nings, and yet not cumbersome so that it is difficult to follow. \nToo much drill on the sounds of the letters, spelling and \npronouncing of words and the punctuation of sentences \ncan hardly be possible. These drills should be both oral \nand written. \n\nThis new edition is full and complete under all headings \nand will make a valuable book in class or for the teacher\'s \nindividual use. \n\nCloth. 189 pp. Price, 60 cents. \n\n\n\nA. FLANAGAN COMPANY :: CHICAGO \n\n\n\nif \n\n\n\n<ft\\Q \n\n\n\nPLAYS \n\n\n\nThere is a growing tendency to make the Friday afternoon \nliterary exercises correlate with, and grow out of the actual \nwork of the school as far as possible. There is also a demand \nfor short, sensible, educative plays, suitable for such occasions. \nV/e offer the following : \n\nTHE MISER OF RAVELOE. Based upon George Eliot\'s novel, \nSilas Marner. 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FLANAGAN COMPANY, CHICAGO \n\n\n\nDeacidified using the Bookkeeper process, \nNeutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide \nTreatment Date: May 2009 \n\nPreservationTechndlogies \n\nA WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION \n\n111 Thomson Park Drive \nCranberry Township, PA 1 6066 \n(724) 779-2111 \n\n\n\nLIBRARY OF CONGRESS \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nV^s^:ll\\\'^"^^ \n\n\nr^^^^^^^^ ^\xe2\x96\xa0[^^\xe2\x96\xa0KS^^v.j^^RJ^HhH^^H^H^^^K^^B^^^^^^^^BI \n\n\n^Ote^^^ \n\n\n^ v"* ;>^ vH \n\n\n\n\n^fe^y \n\n\n/^^^fv^:4s4 \n\n\nn \n\n\np\xc2\xa3HH \n\n\n\n'