I heard her turn the page; she found a small

Sweet Idyl, and once more, as low, she read:

"Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height: What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang)

In height and cold, the splendor of the hills?

But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease

To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine, To sit a star upon the sparkling spire; And come, for Love is of the valley, come, For Love is of the valley, come thou down And find him; by the happy threshold, he, Orhand in hand with Plenty in the maize, Or red with spirted purple of the vats,

| Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk With Death and Morning on the silver horns,

Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,

Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice, That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls

To roll the torrent out of dusky doors: But follow; let the torrent dance thee down

To find him in the valley; let the wild Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill

Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,

That like a broken purpose waste in air: So waste not thou; but come; for all

the vales

than power

In knowledge: something wild within her breast,

A greater than all knowledge, beat her down.

And she had nursed me there from week to week:

Much had she learnt in little time. In part
It was ill counsel had misled the girl
To vex true hearts: yet was she but a
girl-

"Ah fool, and made myself a Queen of farce!

When comes another such? never, I think, Till the Sun drop dead from the signs.' Her voice Choked, and her forehead sank upon her hands,

And her great heart thro' all the faultful Past

Went sorrowing in a pause I dared not

break;

His nights, his days, moves with him to one goal,

Stays all the fair young planet in her hands

If she be small, slight-natured, miserable, How shall men grow? but work no more alone!

Our place is much: as far as in us lies We two will serve them both in aiding her

Will clear away the parasitic forms That seem to keep her up but drag her down

Will leave her space to burgeon out of all Within her-let her make herself her own To give or keep, to live and learn and be All that not harms distinctive womanhood.

For woman is not undevelopt man, But diverse could we make her as the man,

:

Sweet Love were slain : his dearest bond is this,

Not like to like, but like in difference. Yet in the long years liker must they grow; The man be more of woman, she of man; He gain in sweetness and in moral height, Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;

She mental breadth, nor fail in childward

care,

Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants, No Angel, but a dearer being, all dipt In Angel instincts, breathing Paradise, Interpreter between the Gods and men, Who look'd all native to her place, and yet On tiptoe seem'd to touch upon a sphere Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce

Sway'd to her from their orbits as they moved,

fall

He shall not blind his soul with clay." "But I,"

Said Ida, tremulously, "so all unlikeIt seems you love to cheat yourself with words:

This mother is your model. I have heard Of your strange doubts: they well might be: I seem

A mockery to my own self. Never, Prince; You cannot love me.'

"Nay but thee" I said "From yearlong poring on thy pictured

eyes,

Ere seen I loved, and loved thee seen, and saw

Thee woman thro' the crust of iron moods That mask'd thee from men's reverence up, and forced

Sweet love on pranks of saucy boyhood:

now,

Giv'n back to life, to life indeed, thro' thee,

Indeed I love the new day comes, the light

Dearer for night, as dearer thou for faults Lived over lift thine eyes; my doubts are dead,

My haunting sense of hollow shows: the change,

This truthful change in thee has kill'd it. Dear,

Look up, and let thy nature strike on mine, Like yonder morning on the blind halfworld;

Approach and fear not; breathe upon my brows;

In that fine air I tremble, all the past Melts mist-like into this bright hour, and this

Is morn to more, and all the rich to-come Reels, as the golden Autumn woodland

reels

Yoked in all exercise of noble end, And so thro' those dark gates across the wild

That no man knows. Indeed I love thee:

come,

things high

are one:

self;

Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me.

sang,

Or in their silent influence as they sat, Had ever seem'd to wrestle with burlesque, And drove us, last, to quite a solemn close

They hated banter, wish'd for something real,

A gallant fight, a noble princess—why Not make her true-heroic-true-sublime? Or all, they said, as earnest as the close? Which yet with such a framework scarce could be.

Then rose a little feud betwixt the two,
Betwixt the mockers and the realists:
And I, betwixt them both, to please
them both,

And yet to give the story as it rose,
I moved as in a strange diagonal,
And maybe neither pleased myself nor
them.

have told,

For she was cramm'd with theories out of books,

But that there rose a shout: the gates were closed

At sunset, and the crowd were swarming now,

To take their leave, about the garden rails.

So I and some went out to these we

climb'd

The slope to Vivian-place, and turning saw The happy valleys, half in light, and half Far-shadowing from the west, a land of peace;

Gray halls alone among their massive groves;

Trim hamlets; here and there a rustic tower

Half-lost in belts of hop and breadths of wheat;

The shimmering glimpses of a stream; the seas;

A red sail, or a white; and far beyond, Imagined more than seen, the skirts of France.

"Look there, a garden!" said my college friend,

The Tory member's elder son "and there! bless the narrow sea which keeps her off,

God

And

keeps our Britain, whole within herself,

A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled Some sense of duty, something of a faith, Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made,

Some patient force to change them when we will,

Some civic manhood firm against the crowd

But yonder, whiff! there comes a sudden heat,

The gravest citizen seems to lose his head, The king is scared, the soldier will not fight,

The little boys begin to shoot and stab,
A kingdom topples over with a shriek
Like an old woman, and down rolls the
world

In mock heroics stranger than our own;
Revolts, republics, revolutions, most
No graver than a schoolboys' barring out;
Too comic for the solemn things they are,

year

To follow a shout rose again, and made The long line of the approaching rookery swerve

From the elms, and shook the branches of the deer

From slope to slope thro' distant ferns, and rang

Beyond the bourn of sunset; O, a shout More joyful than the city-roar that hails Premier or king! Why should not these great Sirs

Give up their parks some dozen times a year

To let the people breathe? So thrice they cried,

I likewise, and in groups they stream'd away.

But we went back to the Abbey, and sat on,

So much the gathering darkness charm'd :