Like some sweet sculpture draped from head to foot,

And push'd by rude hands from its pedestal,

All her fair length upon the ground she lay :

And at her head a follower of the camp,

A charr'd and wrinkled piece of womanhood,
Sat watching like a watcher by the dead.

Then Florian knelt, and 'Come,' he whisper'd to her, 'Lift up your head, sweet sister lie not thus.

What have you done but right? you could not slay
Me, nor your prince: look up: be comforted:

Sweet is it to have done the thing one ought,

When fall'n in darker ways.' And likewise I: 'Be comforted: have I not lost her too,

In whose least act abides the nameless charm

That none has else for me.'

She heard, she moved,

She moan'd, a folded voice; and up she sat,

And raised the cloak from brows as pale and smooth,

As those that mourn half-shrouded over death

In deathless marble. 'Her,' she said, 'my friend

Parted from her

betray'd her cause and mine

Where shall I breathe? why kept ye not your

faith?

O base and bad! what comfort? none for me!'
To whom remorseful Cyril, 'Yet I pray
Take comfort: live, dear lady, for your child,'
At which she lifted up her voice and cried:

'Ah me, my babe, my blossom, ah my child, My one sweet child, whom I shall see no more! For now will cruel Ida keep her back;

And either she will die from want of care,

Or sicken with ill usage, when they say

The child is hers for

every

little fault,

The child is hers; and they will beat my girl,

Remembering her mother: O my flower!

Or they will take her, they will make her hard,

And she will pass me by in after-life

With some cold reverence worse than were she dead.

Ill mother that I was to leave her there,

To lag behind, scared by the cry they made,

The horror of the shame among them all :
But I will go and sit beside the doors,
And make a wild petition night and day,

Until they hate to hear me like a wind
Wailing for ever, till they open to me,
And lay my little blossom at my feet,
My babe, my sweet Aglaïa, my one child:
And I will take her up and go my way,

And satisfy my soul with kissing her:

Ah! what might that man not deserve of me,

Who gave me back my child?' 'Be comforted,' Said Cyril, you shall have it:' but again

She veil'd her brows, and prone she sank, and so Like tender things that being caught feign death, Spoke not, nor stirr'd.

By this a murmur ran

Thro' all the camp, and inward raced the scouts

With rumour of Prince Arac hard at hand.

We left her by the woman, and without

Found the gray kings at parle: and 'Look to it,' cried

My father, that our compact is performed:

You have spoilt this girl; she laughs at you and man : She shall not legislate for Nature, king,

But yields, or war.'

King

Then Gama turn'd to me:

'We fear, indeed, you spent a stormy time

With our strange child: and yet they say that still

You love her. Give us, then, your mind at large:
How say you, war or not?'

'Not war, if possible,

O king,' I said, 'lest from the abuse of war,

The desecrated shrine, the trampled year,

The smouldering homestead, and the household flower

Torn from the lintel all the common wrong

A smoke go up thro' which I loom to her
Three times a monster: now she lightens scorn
At the enemy of her plan, but then would hate

(And every voice she talk'd with ratify it,
And every face she look'd on justify it)
The general foe. More soluble is this knot,
Like almost all the rest if men were wise,

By gentleness than war. I want her love.

What were I nigher this, altho' we dash'd

Your cities into shards with catapults,

And dusted down your domes with mangonels;

She would not love; - or brought her chain'd, a slave,

The lifting of whose eyelash is my lord,

Not ever would she love; but brooding turn
The book of scorn, till all my little chance

Were caught within the record of her wrongs,
And crush'd to death; and rather, Sire, than this
I would the old God of war himself were dead,

Forgotten, rusting on his iron hills,

Rotting on some wild shore with ribs of wreck,

Or like an old-world mammoth bulk'd in ice,

Not to be molten out.'

And roughly spake