His visage all agrin as at a wake,

Made at me thro' the press, and, staggering back

With stroke on stroke the horse and horseman, came

As comes a pillar of electric cloud,

Flaying the roofs and sucking up the drains,

And shadowing down the champain till it strikes

On a wood, and takes, and breaks, and cracks, and

splits,

And twists the grain with such a roar that Earth

Reels, and the herdsmen cry; for everything

Gave way before him: 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, heavier, stronger, he that smote
And threw him: last I spurr'd; 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 dream and truth

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

Home they brought her warrior dead : She nor swoon'd, nor utter'd cry:

All her maidens, watching, said,

'She must weep or she will die.'

Then they praised him, soft and low, Call'd him worthy to be loved,

Truest friend and noblest foe;

Yet she neither spoke nor moved.

Stole a maiden from her place,
Lightly to the warrior stept,
Took the face-cloth from the face;
Yet she neither moved nor wept.

Rose a nurse of ninety years,

Set his child upon her knee

Like summer tempest came her tears

'Sweet my child, I live for thee.'

VI.

My dream had never died or lived again.
As in some mystic middle state I lay;
Seeing I saw not, hearing not I heard:
Tho', if I saw not, yet they told me all
So often that I speak as having seen.

For so it seem'd, or so they said to me,

That all things grew more tragic and more strange ; That when our side was vanquish'd and my cause For ever lost, there went up a great cry,

The Prince is slain. My father heard and ran

In on the lists, and there unlaced my casque
And grovell'd on my body, and after him
Came Psyche, sorrowing for Aglaïa.

But high upon the palace Ida stood

With Psyche's babe in arm: there on the roofs
Like that great dame of Lapidoth she sang.

'Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: the seed, The little seed they laugh'd at in the dark,

Has risen and cleft the soil, and grown a bulk

Of spanless girth, that lays on every side

A thousand arms and rushes to the Sun.

'Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: they came; The leaves were wet with women's tears: they heard A noise of songs they would not understand:

They mark'd it with the red cross to the fall,

And would have strown it, and are fall'n themselves.

'Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: they came,

The woodmen with their axes: lo the tree!

But we will make it faggots for the hearth,

And shape it plank and beam for roof and floor,

And boats and bridges for the use of men.