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Home they brought her warrior dead :
She nor swoon'd, nor utter'd cry:

All her maidens, watching, said,

'She must weep or she will die.'

Then they praised him, soft and low,
Call'd him worthy to be loved,

Truest friend and noblest foe;

Yet she neither spoke nor moved.

Stole a maiden from her place,
Lightly to the warrior stept,

Took the face-cloth from the face;

Yet she neither moved nor wept.

Rose a nurse of ninety years,

Set his child upon her kneeLike summer tempest came her tears— 'Sweet my child, I live for thee.'

VI.

WHAT follow'd, tho' I saw not, yet I heard
So often that I speak as having seen.

For when our side was vanquished and my cause

For ever lost, there went up a great cry

The Prince is slain. My father heard and ran

In on the lists, and there unlaced my casque

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

But high upon the palace Ida stood
With Psyche's babe in arm: there on the roofs
Like that great dame of Lapidoth she sang.

'Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: the seed

The little seed they laugh'd at in the dark,
Has risen and cleft the soil, and grown a bulk

Of spanless girth, that lays on every side

A thousand arms and rushes to the Sun.

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Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: they came;

The leaves were wet with women's tears: they heard

A noise of songs they would not understand:

They mark'd it with the red cross to the fall,

And would have strown it, and are fall'n themselves.

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Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: they came,

The woodmen with their axes: lo the tree !

But we will make it faggots for the hearth,

And shape it plank and beam for roof and floor,
And boats and bridges for the use of men.

Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: they struck; With their own blows they hurt themselves, nor knew There dwelt an iron nature in the grain :

The glittering axe was broken in their arms, Their arms were shatter'd to the shoulder blade.

Our enemies have fall'n, but this shall grow A night of Summer from the heat, a breadth Of Autumn, dropping fruits of power; and roll'd With music in the growing breeze of Time,

The tops shall strike from star to star, the fangs Shall move the stony bases of the world.

'And now, O maids, behold our sanctuary

Is violate, our laws broken: fear we not

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

Their statues, born aloft, the three but come,

We will be liberal, since our rights are won.

Let them not lie in the tents with coarse mankind,

Ill nurses; but descend, and proffer these

The brethren of our blood and cause, that there

Lie bruised and maim'd, the tender ministries

Of female hands and hospitality.'

She spoke, and with the babe yet in her arms, Descending, burst the great bronze valves, and led A hundred maids in train across the Park.

Some cowl'd, and some bare-headed, on they came,
Their feet in flowers, her loveliest by them went
The enamour'd air sighing, and on their curls
From the high tree the blossom wavering fell,
And over them the tremulous isles of light
Slided, they moving under shade: but Blanche
At distance follow'd: so they came: anon
Thro' open field into the lists they wound
Timorously; and as the leader of the herd
That holds a stately fretwork to the Sun,
And follow'd up by a hundred airy does,

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