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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 beckon'd 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 her slacken'd 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 ail!'

'No plot, no plot,' he answer'd. 'Wretched boy,

How saw you not the inscription on the gate,

LET NO MAN ENTER IN ON pain of deatH?'

'And if I had,' he answer'd, 'who could think

The softer Adams of your Academe,

O sister, Sirens tho' they be, were such

As chanted on the blanching bones of men?'
But you will find it otherwise,' she said.

'You jest ill jesting with edge-tools! I am bound To tell her. O, she has an iron will,

An axelike edge unturnable, our Head,

The Princess.' 'Well then, Psyche, take my life,

And nail me like a weasel on a grange

For warning: bury me beside the gate,
And cut this epitaph above my bones;

Here lies a brother by a sister slain,
All for the common good of womankind.'
'Let me die too,' said Cyril, 'having seen

And heard the Lady Psyche.'

I struck in:

'Albeit so mask'd, Madam, I love the truth;

Receive it; and in me behold the Prince

Your countryman, affianced years ago
To the Lady Ida: here, for here she was,
And thus (what other way was left) I came.'
'O Sir, O Prince, I have no country; none;
If any, this; but none.
Whate'er I was

Disrooted, what I am is grafted here.

Affianced, Sir? love-whispers may not breathe
Within this vestal limit, and how should I,
Who am not mine, say, live: the thunderbolt
Hangs silent; but prepare: I speak; it falls.'
'Yet pause; I said, 'for that inscription there,
I think no more of deadly lurks therein,

Than in a clapper clapping in a garth,

To scare the fowl from fruit: if more there be,

If more and acted on, what follows? war;

Your own work marr'd: for this your Academe,

Whichever side be Victor, in the halloo

Will topple to the trumpet down, and pass

With all fair theories only made to gild

A stormless summer.'

'Let the Princess judge

Of that,' she said: 'farewell, Sir

I shudder at the sequel, but I go.'

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'Are you that Lady Psyche,' I rejoin'd,

The fifth in line from that old Florian,

Yet hangs his portrait in my father's hall
(The gaunt old Baron with his beetle brow
Sun-shaded in the heat of dusty fights)

As he bestrode my Grandsire, when he fell,
And all else fled: we point to it, and we say,
The loyal warmth of Florian is not cold,
But branches current yet in kindred veins.'
'Are you that Psyche,' Florian added, 'she
With whom I sang about the morning hills,
Flung ball, flew kite, and raced the purple fly,
And snared the squirrel of the glen? are you
That Psyche, wont to bind my throbbing brow,
To smooth my pillow, mix the foaming draught
Of fever, tell me pleasant tales, and read

My sickness down to happy dreams? are you
That brother-sister Psyche, both in one?

You were that Psyche, but what are you now?'

'You are that Psyche,' Cyril said, ' for whom I would be that for ever which I seem,

A woman, if I might sit beside your feet,

And glean your scatter'd sapience.'

Then once more,

'Are you that Lady Psyche,' I began,

'That on her bridal morn before she past From all her old companions, when the king

Kiss'd her pale cheek, declared that ancient ties Would still be dear beyond the southern hills; That were there any of our people there

In want or peril, there was one to hear

And help them: look! for such are these and I.' 'Are you that Psyche,' Florian ask'd, 'to whom, In gentler days, your arrow-wounded fawn

Came flying while you sat beside the well?

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