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Distinct in individualities,

But like each other even as those who love.

Then comes the statelier Eden back to men:

Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm : Then springs the crowning race of humankind.

May these things be!'

They will not.'

Sighing she spoke, 'I fear

'Dear, but let us type them now

In our own lives, and this proud watchword rest

Of equal; seeing either sex alone

Is half itself, and in true marriage lies
Nor equal, nor unequal: each fulfils

Defect in each, and always thought in thought,

Purpose in purpose, will in will, they grow,

The single pure and perfect animal,

The two-cell'd heart, beating with one full stroke
Life.'

And again sighing she spoke: 'A dream

That once was mine! what woman taught you this?'

'Alone,' I said, from earlier than I know,

Immersed in rich foreshadowings of the world,

I loved the woman: he, that doth not, lives

A drowning life, besotted in sweet self,
Or pines in sad experience worse than death,
Or keeps his wing'd affections clipt with crime:
Yet was there one thro' whom I loved her, one
Not learned, save in gracious household ways,
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
And girdled her with music. Happy he

With such a mother! faith in womankind

Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high

Comes easy to him, and tho' he trip and fall,

He shall not blind his soul with clay.'

Said Ida, 'so unlike, so all unlike

' But I,'

It seems you love to cheat yourself with words:
This mother is your model. Never, Prince;

You cannot love me.'

'Nay but thee,' I said,

'From yearlong poring on thy pictured eyes,

Or some mysterious or magnetic touch,

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; doubt me no more;

Look up and let thy nature strike on mine

Like yonder morning on the blind half-world;

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

I scarce believe, and all the rich to come

Reels, as the golden Autumn woodland reels
Athwart the smoke of burning flowers. Forgive me,

I waste my heart in signs: let be. My bride,

My wife, my life. O we will walk this world,
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,
Yield thyself up: my hopes and thine are one:
Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself

Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me.'

CONCLUSION.

HERE closed our compound story, which at first

Had only meant to banter little maids

With mock-heroics and with parody:

But slipt in some strange way, crost with burlesque,

From mock to earnest, even into tones

Of tragic, and with less and less of jest

To such a serious end, that Lilia fixt

A showery glance upon her Aunt and said,

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tell us what we are;' who there began

A treatise, growing with it, and might have flow'd

In axiom worthier to be grav'n on rock,
Than all that lasts of old-world hieroglyph,
Or lichen-fretted Rune and arrowhead;

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