Six thousand years of fear have made you that From which I would redeem you: but for those That stir this hubbub--you and you--I know Your faces there in the crowd--tomorrow morn We hold a great convention: then shall they That love their voices more than duty, learn With whom they deal, dismissed in shame to live No wiser than their mothers, household stuff, Live chattels, mincers of each other's fame, Full of weak poison, turnspits for the clown, The drunkard's football, laughing-stocks of Time, Whose brains are in their hands and in their heels But fit to flaunt, to dress, to dance, to thrum, To tramp, to scream, to burnish, and to scour, For ever slaves at home and fools abroad.'
She, ending, waved her hands: thereat the crowd Muttering, dissolved: then with a smile, that looked A stroke of cruel sunshine on the cliff, When all the glens are drowned in azure gloom Of thunder-shower, she floated to us and said:
'You have done well and like a gentleman, And like a prince: you have our thanks for all:
And you look well too in your woman's dress:
Well have you done and like a gentleman.
You saved our life: we owe you bitter thanks:
Better have died and spilt our bones in the flood--Then men had said--but now--What hinders me To take such bloody vengeance on you both?--Yet since our father--Wasps in our good hive, You would-be quenchers of the light to be, Barbarians, grosser than your native bears--O would I had his sceptre for one hour!
You that have dared to break our bound, and gulled Our servants, wronged and lied and thwarted us--~I~ wed with thee! ~I~ bound by precontract Your bride, our bondslave! not though all the gold That veins the world were packed to make your crown, And every spoken tongue should lord you. Sir, Your falsehood and yourself are hateful to us:
I trample on your offers and on you:
Begone: we will not look upon you more.
Here, push them out at gates.'
In wrath she spake.
Then those eight mighty daughters of the plough Bent their broad faces toward us and addressed Their motion: twice I sought to plead my cause, But on my shoulder hung their heavy hands, The weight of destiny: so from her face They pushed us, down the steps, and through the court, And with grim laughter thrust us out at gates.
We crossed the street and gained a petty mound Beyond it, whence we saw the lights and heard the voices murmuring. While I listened, came On a sudden the weird seizure and the doubt:
I seemed to move among a world of ghosts;The Princess with her monstrous woman-guard, The jest and earnest working side by side, The cataract and the tumult and the kings Were shadows; and the long fantastic night With all its doings had and had not been, And all things were and were not.
This went by As strangely as it came, and on my spirits Settled a gentle cloud of melancholy;Not long; I shook it off; for spite of doubts And sudden ghostly shadowings I was one To whom the touch of all mischance but came As night to him that sitting on a hill Sees the midsummer, midnight, Norway sun Set into sunrise; then we moved away.
Thy voice is heard through rolling drums, That beat to battle where he stands;Thy face across his fancy comes, And gives the battle to his hands:
A moment, while the trumpets blow, He sees his brood about thy knee;The next, like fire he meets the foe, And strikes him dead for thine and thee.
So Lilia sang: we thought her half-possessed, She struck such warbling fury through the words;And, after, feigning pique at what she called The raillery, or grotesque, or false sublime--Like one that wishes at a dance to change The music--clapt her hands and cried for war, Or some grand fight to kill and make an end:
And he that next inherited the tale Half turning to the broken statue, said, 'Sir Ralph has got your colours: if I prove Your knight, and fight your battle, what for me?'
It chanced, her empty glove upon the tomb Lay by her like a model of her hand.
She took it and she flung it. 'Fight' she said, 'And make us all we would be, great and good.'
He knightlike in his cap instead of casque, A cap of Tyrol borrowed from the hall, Arranged the favour, and assumed the Prince.
