VII. So was their sanctuary violated, A kindlier influence reign'd; and everywhere Low voices with the ministering hand Hung round the sick the maidens came, they talk'd, They sang, they read: till she not fair, began To gather light, and she that was, became Her former beauty treble; and to and fro With books, with flowers, with Angel offices, Like creatures native unto gracious act, And in their own clear element, they moved. But sadness on the soul of Ida fell, And hatred of her weakness, blent with shame. O'er land and main, and sees a great black cloud And waste it seem'd and vain; till down she came And twilight dawn'd; and morn by morn the lark Shot up and shrill'd in flickering gyres, but I Lay silent in the muffled cage of life: And twilight gloom'd; and broader grown the bowers Drew the great night into themselves, and Heaven Star after star arose and fell, but I Lay sunder'd from the moving Universe, Nor knew what eye was on me nor the hand That nursed me, more than infants in their sleep. But Psyche tended Florian: with her oft Her child among us, willing she should keep A light of healing, glanced about the couch, With blush and smile, a medicine in themselves To wile the length from languorous hours and draw The sting from pain; nor seem'd it strange that soon He rose up whole, and those fair charities Join'd at her side: nor stranger seem'd that hearts So gentle, so employ'd, should close in love, Than when two dewdrops on the petal shake To the same sweet air and tremble deeper down, And slip at once all-fragrant into one. Less prosperously the second suit obtain'd At first with Psyche. Not tho' Blanche had sworn That after that dark night among the fields, She needs must wed him for her own good name; Seen but of Psyche. On her foot she hung Nor only these: Love in the sacred halls Held carnival at will, and flying struck With showers of random sweet on maid and man. Nor did her father cease to press my claim, Nor did mine own now reconciled; nor yet Did those twin brothers, risen again and whole; But I lay still, and with me oft she sat : Then came a change; for sometimes I would catch Her hand in wild delirium, gripe it hard, And fling it like a viper off, and shriek 'You are not Ida;' clasp it once again And call her Ida, tho' I knew her not, And call her sweet, as if in irony, And call her hard and cold which seem'd a truth: And still she fear'd that I should lose my mind, And often she believed that I should die : Till out of long frustration of her care, |