So saying, she bow'd and waved Dismissal back again we crost the court To Lady Psyche's: as we enter'd in, There sat along the forms, like morning doves That sun their milky bosoms on the thatch, A quick brunette, well-moulded, falcon-eyed, This world was once a fluid haze of light, Till toward the centre set the starry tides. And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast The planets: then the monster, then the man; Tattoo'd or woaded, winter-clad in skins, Raw from the prime, and crushing down his mate; As yet we find in barbarous isles, and here Among the lowest.' Thereupon she took A bird's-eye-view of all the ungracious past; Glanced at the legendary Amazon As emblematic of a nobler age; Appraised the Lycian custom, spoke of those Ran down the Persian, Grecian, Roman lines And little-footed China, touch'd on Mahomet To woman, superstition all awry : However then commenced the dawn: a beam Of promise; fruit would follow. Deep, indeed, Their debt of thanks to her who first had dared Disyoke their necks from custom, and assert None lordlier than themselves but that which made Woman and man. She had founded; they must build : Here might they learn whatever men were taught : Let them not fear: some said their heads were less : Some men's were small; not they the least of men ; Besides the brain was like the hand, and grew With using; thence the man's, if more was more; He took advantage of his strength to be First in the field: some ages had been lost; Was longer; and albeit their glorious names The highest is the measure of the man, And not the Caffre, Hottentot, Malay, Nor those horn-handed breakers of the glebe, But Homer, Plato, Verulam; even so With woman and in arts of government Elizabeth and others; arts of war The peasant Joan and others; arts of grace Sappho and others vied with any man: And she, tho' last not least, who had left her place, And bow'd her state to them, that they might grow To use and power on this Oasis, lapt In the arms of leisure, sacred from the blight Of ancient influence and scorn.' At last She rose upon a wind of prophecy Dilating on the future; everywhere Two heads in council, two beside the hearth, Two in the tangled business of the world, Two in the liberal offices of life, Two plummets dropt for one to sound the abyss. Of science, and the secrets of the mind: Musician, painter, sculptor, critic, more : And everywhere the broad and bounteous Earth Should bear a double growth of those rare souls, She ended here, and beckon'd us the rest Parted; and, glowing full-faced welcome, she Began to address us, and was moving on In gratulation, till as when a boat Tacks, and her slacken'd sail flaps, all her voice Faltering and fluttering in her throat, she cried My brother!' Well, my sister.' 'O' she said What do you here? and in this dress? and these? Why who are these? a wolf within the fold! A pack of wolves! the Lord be gracious to me! A plot, a plot, a plot to ruin all!' No plot, no plot,' he answer'd. • Wretched boy How saw you not the inscription on the gate, |