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

VI.

WHAT follow'd, tho' I saw not, yet I heard
So often that I speak as having seen.

For when our side was vanquished 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.

'Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: they struck; With their own blows they hurt themselves, nor knew

There dwelt an iron nature in the grain:

The glittering axe was broken in their arms, Their arms were shatter'd to the shoulder blade.

'Our enemies have fall'n, but this shall grow A night of Summer from the heat, a breadth Of Autumn, dropping fruits of power; and roll'd With music in the Æonian breeze of Time,

The tops shall strike from star to star, the fangs Shall move the stony bases of the world.

'And now, O maids, behold our sanctuary

Is violate, our laws broken: fear we not

To break them more in their behoof, whose arms
Champion'd our cause and won it with a day
Blanch'd in our annals, and perpetual feast,
When dames and heroines of the golden year
Shall strip a hundred hollows bare of Spring,
To rain an April of ovation round

Their statues, borne aloft, the three: but come,

We will be liberal, since our rights are won.

Let them not lie in the tents with coarse mankind,

Ill nurses; but descend, and proffer these

The brethren of our blood and cause, that there

Lie bruised and maim'd, the tender ministries

Of female hands and hospitality.'

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,