So stood that same fair creature at the door. Then Lady Psyche, 'Ah-Melissa you! You heard us?' and Melissa, 'O pardon me! I heard, I could not help it, did not mean : This whole foundation ruin, and I lose My honour, these their lives.' 'Ah, fear me not,' Replied Melissa, 'no-I would not tell, No, not for all Aspasia's cleverness, No, not to answer, Madam, all those hard things That Sheba came to ask of Solomon.' 'Be it so,' the other, 'that we may live to lead The new light up, and culminate in peace, For Solomon may come to Sheba yet.' Feasted the woman wisest then, in halls (Tho' madam you should answer, we would ask) Among us, debtors for our lives to you, Myself for something more.' He said not what, But 'Thanks,' she answered, 'go: we have been too long They do so that affect abstraction here. We turn'd to go, but Cyril took the child, While Psyche watch'd them, smiling, and the child And then we stroll'd From room to room in each we sat, we heard The grave Professor. On the lecture slate The circle rounded under female hands With flawless demonstration: follow'd then A classic lecture, rich in sentiment, With scraps of thundrous Epic lilted out By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long, That treats of whatsoever is, the state, The total chronicles of man, the mind, The morals, something of the frame, the rock, The star, the bird, the fish, the shell, the flower, Electric, chemic laws, and all the rest, And whatsoever can be taught and known; Till like three horses that have broken fence, And glutted all night long breast-deep in corn, We issued gorged with knowledge, and I spoke : 'Why, Sirs, they do all this as well as we.' "They hunt old trails,' said Cyril, 'very well; But when did woman ever yet invent?' 'Ungracious!' answer'd Florian, 'have you learnt A thousand hearts lie fallow in these halls, Shall those three castles patch my tatter'd coat? For dear are those three castles to my wants, And two dear things are one of double worth, The Doctors! O to watch the thirsty plants To break my chain, to shake my mane: but come, Make liquid treble of that bassoon, my throat; Star-sisters answering under crescent brows; Abate the stride, which speaks of man, and loose A flying charm of blushes o'er this cheek, Where they like swallows coming out of time Will wonder why they came: but hark the bell For dinner, let us go!' And in we stream'd |