Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Tennyson Alfred

  Bows all its ears before the roaring East;

  ‘Three ladies of the Northern empire pray

  Your Highness would enroll them with your own,

  As Lady Psyche’s pupils.’

  This I sealed:

  The seal was Cupid bent above a scroll,

  And o’er his head Uranian Venus hung,

  And raised the blinding bandage from his eyes:

  I gave the letter to be sent with dawn;

  And then to bed, where half in doze I seemed

  To float about a glimmering night, and watch

  A full sea glazed with muffled moonlight, swell

  On some dark shore just seen that it was rich.

  As through the land at eve we went,

  And plucked the ripened ears,

  We fell out, my wife and I,

  O we fell out I know not why,

  And kissed again with tears.

  And blessings on the falling out

  That all the more endears,

  When we fall out with those we love

  And kiss again with tears!

  For when we came where lies the child

  We lost in other years,

  There above the little grave,

  O there above the little grave,

  We kissed again with tears.

  Princess: II

  At break of day the College Portress came:

  She brought us Academic silks, in hue

  The lilac, with a silken hood to each,

  And zoned with gold; and now when these were on,

  And we as rich as moths from dusk cocoons,

  She, curtseying her obeisance, let us know

  The Princess Ida waited: out we paced,

  I first, and following through the porch that sang

  All round with laurel, issued in a court

  Compact of lucid marbles, bossed with lengths

  Of classic frieze, with ample awnings gay

  Betwixt the pillars, and with great urns of flowers.

  The Muses and the Graces, grouped in threes,

  Enringed a billowing fountain in the midst;

  And here and there on lattice edges lay

  Or book or lute; but hastily we past,

  And up a flight of stairs into the hall.

  There at a board by tome and paper sat,

  With two tame leopards couched beside her throne,

  All beauty compassed in a female form,

  The Princess; liker to the inhabitant

  Of some clear planet close upon the Sun,

  Than our man’s earth; such eyes were in her head,

  And so much grace and power, breathing down

  From over her arched brows, with every turn

  Lived through her to the tips of her long hands,

  And to her feet. She rose her height, and said:

  ‘We give you welcome: not without redound

  Of use and glory to yourselves ye come,

  The first-fruits of the stranger: aftertime,

  And that full voice which circles round the grave,

  Will rank you nobly, mingled up with me.

  What! are the ladies of your land so tall?’

  ‘We of the court’ said Cyril. ‘From the court’

  She answered, ‘then ye know the Prince?’ and he:

  ‘The climax of his age! as though there were

  One rose in all the world, your Highness that,

  He worships your ideal:’ she replied:

  ‘We scarcely thought in our own hall to hear

  This barren verbiage, current among men,

  Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment.

  Your flight from out your bookless wilds would seem

  As arguing love of knowledge and of power;

  Your language proves you still the child. Indeed,

  We dream not of him: when we set our hand

  To this great work, we purposed with ourself

  Never to wed. You likewise will do well,

  Ladies, in entering here, to cast and fling

  The tricks, which make us toys of men, that so,

  Some future time, if so indeed you will,

  You may with those self-styled our lords ally

  Your fortunes, justlier balanced, scale with scale.’

  At those high words, we conscious of ourselves,

  Perused the matting: then an officer

  Rose up, and read the statutes, such as these:

  Not for three years to correspond with home;

  Not for three years to cross the liberties;

  Not for three years to speak with any men;

  And many more, which hastily subscribed,

  We entered on the boards: and ‘Now,’ she cried,

  ‘Ye are green wood, see ye warp not. Look, our hall!

  Our statues! — not of those that men desire,

  Sleek Odalisques, or oracles of mode,

  Nor stunted squaws of West or East; but she

  That taught the Sabine how to rule, and she

  The foundress of the Babylonian wall,

  The Carian Artemisia strong in war,

  The Rhodope, that built the pyramid,

  Clelia, Cornelia, with the Palmyrene

  That fought Aurelian, and the Roman brows

  Of Agrippina. Dwell with these, and lose

  Convention, since to look on noble forms

  Makes noble through the sensuous organism

  That which is higher. O lift your natures up:

  Embrace our aims: work out your freedom. Girls,

  Knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed:

  Drink deep, until the habits of the slave,

  The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite

  And slander, die. Better not be at all

  Than not be noble. Leave us: you may go:

  Today the Lady Psyche will harangue

  The fresh arrivals of the week before;

  For they press in from all the provinces,

  And fill the hive.’

  She spoke, and bowing waved

  Dismissal: back again we crost the court

  To Lady Psyche’s: as we entered in,

  There sat along the forms, like morning doves

  That sun their milky bosoms on the thatch,

  A patient range of pupils; she herself

  Erect behind a desk of satin-wood,

  A quick brunette, well-moulded, falcon-eyed,

  And on the hither side, or so she looked,

  Of twenty summers. At her left, a child,

  In shining draperies, headed like a star,

  Her maiden babe, a double April old,

  Aglaïa slept. We sat: the Lady glanced:

  Then Florian, but not livelier than the dame

  That whispered ‘Asses’ ears’, among the sedge,

  ‘My sister.’ ‘Comely, too, by all that’s fair,’

  Said Cyril. ‘Oh hush, hush!’ and she began.

  ‘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;

  Tattooed 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

  That lay at wine with Lar and Lucumo;

  Ran down the Persian, Grecian, Roman lines

  Of empire, and the woman’s state in each,

  How far from just; till warming with her theme

  She fulmined out her scorn of laws Salique

  And little-footed China, touched on Mahomet

  With much contempt, and came to chivalry:<
br />
  When some respect, however slight, was paid

  To woman, superstition all awry:

  However then commenced the dawn: a beam

  Had slanted forward, falling in a land

  Of promise; fruit would follow. Deep, indeed,

  Their debt of thanks to her who first had dared

  To leap the rotten pales of prejudice,

  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;

  For often fineness compensated size:

  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;

  But woman ripened earlier, and her life

  Was longer; and albeit their glorious names

  Were fewer, scattered stars, yet since in truth

  The highest is the measure of the man,

  And not the Kaffir, 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, last not least, she who had left her place,

  And bowed 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

  Who 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,

  Poets, whose thoughts enrich the blood of the world.’

  She ended here, and beckoned 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 the slackened 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 answered. ‘Wretched boy,

  How saw you not the inscription on the gate,

  LET NO MAN ENTER IN ON PAIN OF DEATH?’

  ‘And if I had,’ he answered, ‘who could think

  The softer Adams of your Academe,

  O sister, Sirens though they be, were such

  As chanted on the blanching bones of men?’

  ‘But you will find it otherwise’ she said.

  ‘You jest: ill jesting with edge-tools! my vow

  Binds me to speak, and O that iron will,

  That axelike edge unturnable, our Head,

  The Princess.’ ‘Well then, Psyche, take my life,

  And nail me like a weasel on a grange

  For warning: bury me beside the gate,

  And cut this epitaph above my bones;

  Here lies a brother by a sister slain,

  All for the common good of womankind.’

  ‘Let me die too,’ said Cyril, ‘having seen

  And heard the Lady Psyche.’

  I struck in:

  ‘Albeit so masked, Madam, I love the truth;

  Receive it; and in me behold the Prince

  Your countryman, affianced years ago

  To the Lady Ida: here, for here she was,

  And thus (what other way was left) I came.’

  ‘O Sir, O Prince, I have no country; none;

  If any, this; but none. Whate’er I was

  Disrooted, what I am is grafted here.

  Affianced, Sir? love-whispers may not breathe

  Within this vestal limit, and how should I,

  Who am not mine, say, live: the thunderbolt

  Hangs silent; but prepare: I speak; it falls.’

  ‘Yet pause,’ I said: ‘for that inscription there,

  I think no more of deadly lurks therein,

  Than in a clapper clapping in a garth,

  To scare the fowl from fruit: if more there be,

  If more and acted on, what follows? war;

  Your own work marred: for this your Academe,

  Whichever side be Victor, in the halloo

  Will topple to the trumpet down, and pass

  With all fair theories only made to gild

  A stormless summer.’ ‘Let the Princess judge

  Of that’ she said: ‘farewell, Sir — and to you.

  I shudder at the sequel, but I go.’

  ‘Are you that Lady Psyche,’ I rejoined,

  ‘The fifth in line from that old Florian,

  Yet hangs his portrait in my father’s hall

  (The gaunt old Baron with his beetle brow

  Sun-shaded in the heat of dusty fights)

  As he bestrode my Grandsire, when he fell,

  And all else fled? we point to it, and we say,

  The loyal warmth of Florian is not cold,

  But branches current yet in kindred veins.’

  ‘Are you that Psyche,’ Florian added; ‘she

  With whom I sang about the morning hills,

  Flung ball, flew kite, and raced the purple fly,

  And snared the squirrel of the glen? are you

  That Psyche, wont to bind my throbbing brow,

  To smoothe my pillow, mix the foaming draught

  Of fever, tell me pleasant tales, and read

  My sickness down to happy dreams? are you

  That brother-sister Psyche, both in one?

  You were that Psyche, but what are you now?’

  ‘You are that Psyche,’ said Cyril, ‘for whom

  I would be that for ever which I seem,

  Woman, if I might sit beside your feet,

  And glean your scattered sapience.’

  Then once more,

  ‘Are you that Lady Psyche,’ I began,

  ‘That on her bridal morn before she past

  From all her old companions, when the kind

  Kissed her pale cheek, declared that ancient ties

  Would still be dear beyond the southern hills;

  That were there any of our people there

  In want or peril, there was one to hear

  And help them? look! for such are these and I.’

  ‘Are you that Psyche,’ Florian asked, ‘to whom,

  In gentler days, your arrow-wounded fawn

  Came flying while you sat beside the well?

  The creature laid his muzzle on your lap,

  And sobbed, and you sobbed with it, and the blood

  Was sprinkled on your kirtle, and you wept.

  That was fawn’s blood, not brother’s, yet you wept.

  O by the bright head of my little niece,

  You were that Psyche, and what are you now?’

  ‘You are that Psyche,’ Cyril said again,

  ‘The mother of the sweetest little maid,

  That ever crowed for kisses.’
<
br />   ‘Out upon it!’

  She answered, ‘peace! and why should I not play

  The Spartan Mother with emotion, be

  The Lucius Junius Brutus of my kind?

  Him you call great: he for the common weal,

  The fading politics of mortal Rome,

  As I might slay this child, if good need were,

  Slew both his sons: and I, shall I, on whom

  The secular emancipation turns

  Of half this world, be swerved from right to save

  A prince, a brother? a little will I yield.

  Best so, perchance, for us, and well for you.

  O hard, when love and duty clash! I fear

  My conscience will not count me fleckless; yet —

  Hear my conditions: promise (otherwise

  You perish) as you came, to slip away

  Today, tomorrow, soon: it shall be said,

  These women were too barbarous, would not learn;

  They fled, who might have shamed us: promise, all.’

  What could we else, we promised each; and she,

  Like some wild creature newly-caged, commenced

  A to-and-fro, so pacing till she paused

  By Florian; holding out her lily arms

  Took both his hands, and smiling faintly said:

  ‘I knew you at the first: though you have grown

  You scarce have altered: I am sad and glad

  To see you, Florian. I give thee to death

  My brother! it was duty spoke, not I.

  My needful seeming harshness, pardon it.

  Our mother, is she well?’

  With that she kissed

  His forehead, then, a moment after, clung

  About him, and betwixt them blossomed up

  From out a common vein of memory

  Sweet household talk, and phrases of the hearth,

  And far allusion, till the gracious dews

  Began to glisten and to fall: and while

  They stood, so rapt, we gazing, came a voice,

  ‘I brought a message here from Lady Blanche.’

  Back started she, and turning round we saw

  The Lady Blanche’s daughter where she stood,

  Melissa, with her hand upon the lock,

  A rosy blonde, and in a college gown,

  That clad her like an April daffodilly

  (Her mother’s colour) with her lips apart,

  And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes,

  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:

  But, dearest Lady, pray you fear me not,

  Nor think I bear that heart within my breast,

  To give three gallant gentlemen to death.’

  ‘I trust you,’ said the other, ‘for we two