The Princess | Page 8

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:
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