Strove to buffet to land in vain. A tree
Was half disrooted from his place, and stooped
To drench his dark locks in the gurgling wave-
Mid-channel. Right on this we drove and caught;
And, grasping down the boughs, I gain'd the shore.

The culprits steal back to the College. Florian informs the Prince that he crept into the hall, and, "couched behind a Judith," saw and heard what passed. The girls were all called to trial as to their cognizance of the accused. At last Melissa's confession implicated both Lady Psyche and Lady Blanche; but Psyche and Cyril are both fled away. While in disguise, two female proctors seized on them, and brought them to the presence of their indignant and injured mistress. Here she stands→→

They haled us to the Princess, where she sat
High in the hall: above her drooped a lamp,
And made the single jewel on her brow
Burn like the mystic fire on a mast-head,
Prophet of storm. A handmaid on each side

Bowed toward her, combing out her long, black hair,
Damp from the river; and close behind her stood
Eight daughters of the plough, stronger than men,
Huge women, blouz'd with health, and wind, and rain,
And labour. Each was like a Druid rock,

Or like a spire of land that stands apart,

Cleft from the main, and clanged about with mews!

Lady Blanche addresses the Princess, reproaching her for her unjust partiality for her favourite Lady Psyche in preference to herself and her greater services-gives her reasons for not having immediately disclosed the fatal secret, and desires to be dismissed. To which the Princess answers, "Go!"

Thereat the lady stretched a vulture throat,

And shot from crooked lips a haggard smile.

"The plan was mine. I built the nest," she said,

"To hatch the cuckoo. Rise!" and stoop'd to updrag

Melissa; she, half on her mother propt,

Half-drooping from her, turn'd her face, and cast

A liquid look on Ida, full of prayer,

Which melted Florian's fancy as she hung,

A Niobean maid, one arm out,

Appealing to the bolts of Heaven.

But a stir now takes place. A messenger arrives with dispatches

Fear

Stared in her eyes, and chalk'd her face, and wing'd

Her transit to the throne.

The Princess reads them, while anger and other contending passions swelled her breast; and she in her fury whirled them to the Prince as if to say, "Read!" There were two, and both from the hands of Kings. One from her sire, saying, " He had been taken prisoner by the Prince's father, and kept as hostage for the safety of his son." The second was from his father to the Princess, commanding the Princess to deliver up his son unscathed, to give him her hand, and to cleave to her contract, and threatening that very night, if these terms were unfulfilled, to pluck her palace down. The Prince read thus far, and then yielding to his feelings, Sooke in language of eloquence and beauty in the defence of his intrusion. He reminded Ida of his long knowledge and admiration of her-long as his life.

My nurse would tell me of you;
I babbled for you as babies for the moon,
Vague brightness; when a boy, you stoop'd to me
From all high places, lived in all fair lights,

Came in long breezes rapt from the inmost south

And blown to the inmost north; at eve and dawn
With Ida, Ida, Ida, rang the woods;

The leader wildswan in among the stars

Would clang it, and lapt in wreaths of glowworm light

The mellow breaker murmur'd Ida.

He then confesses his deep love, and, saying that he came not unauthorised, on his knee delivers his father's letter.

On one knee

Kneeling I gave it, which she caught and dash'd
Unopen'd on the marble; a tide of fierce
Invective seem'd to wait behind her lips,

As waits a river level with the dam

Ready to burst, and flood the world with foam;
And so she would have spoken, but there rose
A hubbub in the court of half the maids
Gather'd together; from the illumin'd hall
Long lanes of splendour slanted o'er a press

Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes,

And rainbow robes, and gems and gem-like eyes,
And gold and golden heads. They to and fro

Fluctuated, as flow'rs in storm-some red, some pale

All open-mouth'd, all gazing to the light,
Some crying there was an army in the land,

And some that men were in the very walls;

And some they cared not, till a clamour grew

As of a new-world Babel, woman-built,

And worse-confounded. High above them stood
The placid marble Muses, looking peace.

The Princess addresses her virgin subjects in a good round lecture of admonition and advice. She then turns to the Prince :

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 have sav'd our life-
e-we owe you bitter thanks.
Better have died and spilt our bones in the flood
Than man had said-but now-What hinders me
To take such bloody vengeance on you both ?—
Yet since our father-Wasps in the wholesome 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 gull'd
Our tutors, wrong'd, and lied, and thwarted us-

I wed with thee-I bound by pre-contract,
Your bride, your bondslave !-not though all the gold
That veins the world were pack'd to make your crown,
And every spoken tongue should laud you. Sir,
Your falsehood and your face are loathsome to us;
I trample on your offers and on you.

Begone! we will not look upon you more.
Here! push them out at gates!

Forthwith the eight brawny daughters of the plough seize and push them down the steps amid laughter and derision. At a short distance they see and enter a camp, where are the two old kings, the father of the

The Princess; by Alfred Tennyson.

[Feb.

Prince and of the Princess Ida, the latter being prisoner to the former as surety for his son, on seeing whom in safety he gives the king his freedom. The women's habits are doffed; the Prince and his companion put on the warrior's garb; they meet with Cyril in the camp, and are reconciled. He tells them in his flight he fell in with Psyche.

"Then we fell

Into your father's hand, and there she lies,
But will not speak nor stir."

He show'd a tent

A stone-shot off; we enter'd in, and there,
Among piled arms and rough accoutrements,
Pitiful sight! wrapt in a soldier's cloak,

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.

Florian whispers consolation and courage to his afflicted sister, and bids her take comfort, and live for her child's sake.

On this she lifted up her

head, and spoke, as mothers speak, in the eloquence of the heart.

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 ev'ry little fault,

The child is hers; and they will beat my girl,
Remembering her mother: Oh my flower!

Or they will take her-they will make her hard,
And she will pass me by in after-life

With some cold rev'rence, worse than were she dead.

Ill mother that I was, to leave her there

To lag behind, scar'd 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.

In the meantime the two grey old kings are debating the matter. The
Prince's father insists on the performance of the contract, or pronounces
way, which the Prince deprecates, but the obstinate old monarch perseveres
In his senile prejudices and crabbed opinions.

They prize hard knocks and to be won by force.
Tut, you know them not, the girls:
Hey, there's no rose that 's half so dear to them
As he that does the thing they dare not do,
fireathing and sounding beauteous battle, comes
With the air of the trumpet round him, and leaps in
Among the women, snares them by the score

Matter'd and duster'd, wins, tho' dash'd with death
He reddens what he kisses: thus I won

Your mother, a good mother, a good wife,

Worth winning but this firebrand-gentleness

To such as her! if Cyril spake her true,
To catch a dragon in a cherry net,
To trip a tigress with a gossamer,

Were wisdom to it, &c.

Old Gama however takes the Prince's side, and proposes that the Prince should accompany him to the army, and speak with Arac, the Princess's

brother.

You, likewise, our late guests, if so you will,

Follow us who knows? we four may build some plan
Foursquare to opposition.

The description that follows is too animated, elegant, and picturesque,

to be omitted.

Then rode we with the old king across the lawns
Beneath huge trees, a thousand rings of spring
In every bole, a song on every spray

Of birds that piped their Valentines, and woke
Desire in me to infuse my tale of love

In the old king's ears, who promised help, and oozed
All o'er with honey'd answer as we rode;

And blossom-fragrant slipt the heavy dews
Gather'd by night and peace, with each light air
On our mail'd heads; but other thoughts than peace
Burnt in us, when we saw the embattled squares,
And squadrons of the Prince, trampling the flowers
With clamour; for among them rose a cry

As if to greet the king; they made a halt;

The horses yell'd; they clash'd their arms; the drum
Beat; merrily-blowing shrill'd the martial fife;

And in the blast and bray of the long horn

And serpent-throated bugle, undulated

The banner anon to meet us lightly pranced

Three captains out; nor ever had I seen

Such thews of men: the midmost and the highest

Was Arac: all about his motion clung

The shadow of his sister, as the beam

Of the East, that play'd upon them, made them glance
Like those three stars of the airy giant's zone,

That glitter burnish'd by the frosty dark;

And as the fiery Sirius alters hue,

And bickers into red and emerald, shone

Their morions, wash'd with morning, as they came.

The King narrates the Prince's adventures in disguise to his sons, who propose a combat of three to three on either side to decide the dispute, and another brother proposes fifty to fifty as better settling the question. The herald that he sent to Ida had been well belaboured, and turned away by the "eight viragoes;" and Ida, then besieged by two armies, remained constant to her purpose; and her answer to her brother Arac is received, telling him

Whatsoe'er you do

Fight and fight well; strike and strike home. The combat of the two fifties now commences. the palace.

Down

Ida watched it from

From those two bulks at Arac's side, and down
From Arac's arm, as from a giant's flail,
The large blows rain'd, as here and everywhere

He rode the mellay, lord of the ringing lists,

And all the plain, brand, mace, and shaft and shield
Shock'd, like an iron-clanging anvil bang'd

With hammers.

Everything gave way before Arac, who scatters horse and horsemen as

he goes.

Only Florian, he

That loved me closer than his own right eye,
Thrust in between; but Arac rode him down;
And Cyril seeing it, push'd against the Prince,
With Psyche's colour round his helmet, tough,
Strong, supple, sinew-corded, apt at arms;
But tougher, suppler, stronger, he that smote
And threw him last I spurred; I felt my veins
Stretch with fierce heat; a moment hand to hand,
And sword to sword, and horse to horse we hung,
Till I struck out and shouted; the blade glanced;
I did but shear a feather, and life and love

Flow'd from me; darkness closed me; and I fell.

On the report of the Prince's death, his father came sorrowing to the field, and Psyche mourning for Aglaïa. But the inexorable Ida stood up, and sang like Miriam her triumphal song, and then proposed to receive the wounded into the College and tend them, in reward for their gallant and successful services. We must give the description that follows, as a specimen of the elegance of the thought, and imagery, and language.

She spoke, and with the babe yet in her arms,
Descending, burst the great bronze valves, and led
A hundred maids in train across the park.
Some cowl'd, and some bare-headed, on they came,
Their feet in flowers, her loveliest; by them went
The enamour'd air sighing; and on their curls
From the high tree the blossom wavering fell,
And over them the tremulous isles of light
Slided, they moving under shade: but Blanche
At distance follow'd: so they came: anon,
Thro' the open field into the lists they wound,
Timorously; and as the leader of the herd
That holds a stately fretwork to the sun,
And follow'd up by a hundred airy does,
Steps with a tender foot, light as on air,
The lovely, lordly creature floated on

To where her wounded brethren lay; there stay'd;
Knelt on one knee,-the child on one,-and prest
Their hands, and called them dear deliverers,

And happy warriors, and immortal names,

And said, "You shall not lie in the tents, but here,
And nurs'd by those for whom you fought, and serv'd
With female hands, and hospitality."

Passing on over the field of battle, she sees the Prince, and the old King beside him :

Up started from my side

The old lion, glaring with his whelpless eye;

and, seeing the Prince his son lying in his blood, her countenance changed, and thoughts came over her of how he saved her life, and that her brother slew him for it; and then she sees her picture and her raven tress round his neck; and so her iron will is broken, and she beseeches to let her have him, together with her brethren, in her own palace. Psyche's babe is restored to