My mother, 'tis her wont from night to night

To rail at Lady Psyche and her side.

She says the Princess should have been the Head,
Herself and Lady Psyche the two arms;

And so it was agreed when first they came ;

But Lady Psyche was the right hand now,

And she the left, or not, or seldom used;
Hers more than half the students, all the love.

And so last night she fell to canvass you:

Her countrywomen! she did not envy her.

"Who ever saw such wild barbarians?

"Girls?-more like men!" and at these words the snake,

My secret, seem'd to stir within my breast;

And oh, Sirs, could I help it, but my cheek

Began to burn and burn, and her lynx eye

To fix and make me hotter, till she laugh'd:
"O marvellously modest maiden, you!

Men! girls, like men! why, if they had been men
You need not set your thoughts in rubric thus

For wholesale comment." Pardon, I am shamed

That I must needs repeat for my excuse

What looks so little graceful :

66 men

My mother went revolving on the word)

(for still

"And so they are,-very like men indeed—

Then came these dreadful words out one by one, "Why-these-are-men : I shudder'd: "and you

know it."

"O ask me nothing," I said:

"And she knows too,

And she conceals it." So my

mother clutch'd

The truth at once, but with no word from me;

And now thus early risen she goes to inform

The Princess Lady Psyche will be crush'd;

But you may yet be saved, and therefore fly:
But heal me with your pardon ere you go.'

'What pardon, sweet Melissa, for a blush? Said Cyril Pale one, blush again: than wear Those lilies, better blush our lives away.

Yet let us breathe for one hour more in Heaven'

He added, lest some classic Angel speak
In scorn of us, "they mounted, Ganymedes,

To tumble, Vulcans, on the second morn."
But I will melt, this marble into wax

To yield us farther furlough:' and he went.

Melissa shook her doubtful curls, and thought

He scarce would prosper. Tell us,' Florian ask'd,

'How grew this feud betwixt the right and left.'

'O long ago,' she said, 'betwixt these two

Division smoulders hidden: 'tis my mother,
Too jealous, often fretful as the wind

Pent in a crevice: much I bear with her :

I never knew my father, but she says

(God help her) she was wedded to a fool;

And still she rail'd against the state of things.

She had the care of Lady Ida's youth,

And from the Queen's decease she brought her up.

But when your sister came she won the heart

Of Ida: they were still together, grew

(For so they said themselves) inosculated;

Consonant chords that shiver to one note;

One mind in all things: yet my mother still
Affirms your Psyche thieved her theories,
And angled with them for her pupil's love:
She calls her plagiarist; I know not what :
But I must go I dare not tarry' and light
As flies the shadow of a bird she fled.

Then murmur'd Florian gazing after her.
'An open-hearted maiden, true and pure.
If I could love, why this were she: how pretty

Her blushing was, and how she blush'd again,
As if to close with Cyril's random wish :

Not like your Princess cramm'd with erring pride,
Nor like poor Psyche whom she drags in tow.'

The crane,' I said, 'may chatter of the crane,

The dove may murmur of the dove, but I

An eagle clang an eagle to the sphere.

My princess, O my princess! true she errs,

But in her own grand way: being herself

Three times more noble than threescore of men,

She sees herself in every woman else,

And so she wears her error like a crown

To blind the truth and me: for her, and her,

Hebes are they to hand ambrosia, mix

The nectar; but-ah she-whene'er she moves The Samian Herè rises and she speaks

A Memnon smitten with the morning Sun.

So saying from the court we paced, and gain'd The terrace ranged along the Northern front, And leaning there on those balusters, high Above the empurpled champaign, drank the gale

That blown about the foliage underneath,

And sated with the innumerable rose,

Beat balm upon our eyelids. Hither came

6

Cyril, and yawning O hard task,' he cried,

'Better to clear prime forests, heave and thump