A rosy blonde, and in a college gown (Her mother's colour) with her lips apart, As bottom agates seen to wave and float In crystal currents of clear morning seas. So stood that same fair creature at the door. Then Lady Psyche 'Ah-Melissa-you! You heard us?' and Melissa, O pardon me! I heard, I could not help it, did not wish : This whole foundation ruin, and I lose My honour, these their lives.' 'Ah, fear me not' Replied Melissa 'no-I would not tell, No, not for all Aspasia's cleverness, No, not to answer, Madam, all those hard things That Sheba came to ask of Solomon.' 'Be it so' the other 'that we still may lead The new light up, and culminate in peace, For Solomon may come to Sheba yet.' 6 Said Cyril Madam, he the wisest man Feasted the woman wisest then, in halls Of Lebanonian cedar: nor should you (Tho' madam you should answer, we would ask) Less welcome find among us, if you came Among us, debtors for our lives to you, Myself for something more.' He said not what, But ‘Thanks,' she answer'd 'go: we have been too long Together keep your hoods about the face ; They do so that affect abstraction here. Speak little; mix not with the rest; and hold Your promise all, I trust, may yet be well.' We turn'd to go, but Cyril took the child, And held her round the knees against his waist, While Psyche watch'd them, smiling, and the child And thus our conference closed. With scraps of thundrous Epic lilted out By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long The morals, something of the frame, the rock, The star, the bird, the fish, the shell, the flower, Electric, chemic laws, and all the rest, And whatsoever can be taught and known; We issued gorged with knowledge, and I spoke : Why, Sirs, they do all this as well as we.' They hunt old trails' said Cyril 'very well; But when did woman ever yet invent?' 'Ungracious!' answer'd Florian, have you learnt No more from Psyche's lecture, you that talk'd The trash that made me sick, and almost sad?' O trash' he said but with a kernel in it. Should I not call her wise, who made me wise? Than if my brainpan were an empty hull, A thousand hearts lie fallow in these halls, And round these halls a thousand baby loves Fly twanging headless arrows at the hearts, And two dear things are one of double worth, The Doctors! O to watch the thirsty plants To break my chain, to shake my mane: but thou, Make liquid treble of that bassoon, my throat; Abase those eyes that ever loved to meet Star-sisters answering under crescent brows; |