I heard her turn the page; she found a small Sweet Idyl, and once more, as low, she read:
"Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height: What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang) In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine, To sit a star upon the sparkling spire; And come, for love is of the valley, come, For love is of the valley, come thou down And find him; by the happy threshold, he, Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize, Or red with spirted purple of the vats, Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk With Death and Morning on the silver horns, Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine, Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice, That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls To roll the torrent out of dusky doors: But follow; let the torrent dance thee down To find him in the valley; let the wild Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke, That like a broken purpose waste in air: So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth Arise to thee; the children call, and I Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound, Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet; Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn, The moan of doves in immemorial elms, And murmuring of innumerable bees."
So she low-toned; while with shut eyes I lay Listening; then looked. Pale was the perfect face; The bosom with long sighs laboured; and meek Seemed the full lips, and mild the luminous eyes, And the voice trembled and the hand. She said Brokenly, that she knew it, she had failed In sweet humility; had failed in all; That all her labour was but as a block Left in the quarry; but she still were loth, She still were loth to yield herself to one That wholly scorned to help their equal rights Against the sons of men, and barbarous laws.
She prayed me not to judge their cause from her That wronged it, sought far less for truth than power In knowledge: something wild within her breast, A greater than all knowledge, beat her down.
And she had nursed me there from week to week: Much had she learnt in little time. In part It was ill counsel had misled the girl To vex true hearts: yet was she but a girl-- "Ah fool, and made myself a Queen of farce!
When comes another such? never, I think, Till the Sun drop, dead, from the signs."
Her voice choked, and her forehead sank upon her hands, And her great heart through all the faultful Past Went sorrowing in a pause I dared not break; Till notice of a change in the dark world Was lispt about the acacias, and a bird, That early woke to feed her little ones, Sent from a dewy breast a cry for light: She moved, and at her feet the volume fell.
"Blame not thyself too much," I said, "nor blame Too much the sons of men and barbarous laws; These were the rough ways of the world till now.
Henceforth thou hast a helper, me, that know The woman"s cause is man"s: they rise or sink Together, dwarfed or G.o.dlike, bond or free: For she that out of Lethe scales with man The shining steps of Nature, shares with man His nights, his days, moves with him to one goal, Stays all the fair young planet in her hands-- If she be small, slight-natured, miserable, How shall men grow? but work no more alone!
Our place is much: as far as in us lies We two will serve them both in aiding her-- Will clear away the parasitic forms That seem to keep her up but drag her down-- Will leave her s.p.a.ce to burgeon out of all Within her--let her make herself her own To give or keep, to live and learn and be All that not harms distinctive womanhood.
For woman is not undevelopt man, But diverse: could we make her as the man, Sweet Love were slain: his dearest bond is this, Not like to like, but like in difference.
Yet in the long years liker must they grow; The man be more of woman, she of man; He gain in sweetness and in moral height, Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world; She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind; Till at the last she set herself to man, Like perfect music unto n.o.ble words; And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time, Sit side by side, full-summed in all their powers, Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be, Self-reverent each and reverencing each, Distinct in individualities, But like each other even as those who love.
Then comes the statelier Eden back to men: Then reign the world"s great bridals, chaste and calm: Then springs the crowning race of humankind.
May these things be!"
Sighing she spoke "I fear They will not."
"Dear, but let us type them now In our own lives, and this proud watchword rest Of equal; seeing either s.e.x alone Is half itself, and in true marriage lies Nor equal, nor unequal: each fulfils Defect in each, and always thought in thought, Purpose in purpose, will in will, they grow, The single pure and perfect animal, The two-celled heart beating, with one full stroke, Life."
And again sighing she spoke: "A dream That once was mind! what woman taught you this?"
"Alone," I said, "from earlier than I know, Immersed in rich foreshadowings of the world, I loved the woman: he, that doth not, lives A drowning life, besotted in sweet self, Or pines in sad experience worse than death, Or keeps his winged affections clipt with crime: Yet was there one through whom I loved her, one Not learned, save in gracious household ways, Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants, No Angel, but a dearer being, all dipt In Angel instincts, breathing Paradise, Interpreter between the G.o.ds and men, Who looked all native to her place, and yet On tiptoe seemed to touch upon a sphere Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce Swayed to her from their orbits as they moved, And girdled her with music. Happy he With such a mother! faith in womankind Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high Comes easy to him, and though he trip and fall He shall not blind his soul with clay."
"But I,"
Said Ida, tremulously, "so all unlike-- It seems you love to cheat yourself with words: This mother is your model. I have heard of your strange doubts: they well might be: I seem A mockery to my own self. Never, Prince; You cannot love me."
"Nay but thee" I said "From yearlong poring on thy pictured eyes, Ere seen I loved, and loved thee seen, and saw Thee woman through the crust of iron moods That masked thee from men"s reverence up, and forced Sweet love on pranks of saucy boyhood: now, Given back to life, to life indeed, through thee, Indeed I love: the new day comes, the light Dearer for night, as dearer thou for faults Lived over: lift thine eyes; my doubts are dead, My haunting sense of hollow shows: the change, This truthful change in thee has killed it. Dear, Look up, and let thy nature strike on mine, Like yonder morning on the blind half-world; Approach and fear not; breathe upon my brows; In that fine air I tremble, all the past Melts mist-like into this bright hour, and this Is morn to more, and all the rich to-come Reels, as the golden Autumn woodland reels Athwart the smoke of burning weeds. Forgive me, I waste my heart in signs: let be. My bride, My wife, my life. O we will walk this world, Yoked in all exercise of n.o.ble end, And so through those dark gates across the wild That no man knows. Indeed I love thee: come, Yield thyself up: my hopes and thine are one: Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself; Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me."
CONCLUSION
So closed our tale, of which I give you all The random scheme as wildly as it rose: The words are mostly mine; for when we ceased There came a minute"s pause, and Walter said, "I wish she had not yielded!" then to me, "What, if you drest it up poetically?"
So prayed the men, the women: I gave a.s.sent: Yet how to bind the scattered scheme of seven Together in one sheaf? What style could suit?
The men required that I should give throughout The sort of mock-heroic gigantesque, With which we bantered little Lilia first: The women--and perhaps they felt their power, For something in the ballads which they sang, Or in their silent influence as they sat, Had ever seemed to wrestle with burlesque, And drove us, last, to quite a solemn close-- They hated banter, wished for something real, A gallant fight, a n.o.ble princess--why Not make her true-heroic--true-sublime?
Or all, they said, as earnest as the close?
Which yet with such a framework scarce could be.
Then rose a little feud betwixt the two, Betwixt the mockers and the realists: And I, betwixt them both, to please them both, And yet to give the story as it rose, I moved as in a strange diagonal, And maybe neither pleased myself nor them.
But Lilia pleased me, for she took no part In our dispute: the sequel of the tale Had touched her; and she sat, she plucked the gra.s.s, She flung it from her, thinking: last, she fixt A showery glance upon her aunt, and said, "You--tell us what we are" who might have told, For she was crammed with theories out of books, But that there rose a shout: the gates were closed At sunset, and the crowd were swarming now, To take their leave, about the garden rails.
So I and some went out to these: we climbed The slope to Vivian-place, and turning saw The happy valleys, half in light, and half Far-shadowing from the west, a land of peace; Gray halls alone among their ma.s.sive groves; Trim hamlets; here and there a rustic tower Half-lost in belts of hop and breadths of wheat; The shimmering glimpses of a stream; the seas; A red sail, or a white; and far beyond, Imagined more than seen, the skirts of France.
"Look there, a garden!" said my college friend, The Tory member"s elder son, "and there!
G.o.d bless the narrow sea which keeps her off, And keeps our Britain, whole within herself, A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled-- Some sense of duty, something of a faith, Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made, Some patient force to change them when we will, Some civic manhood firm against the crowd-- But yonder, whiff! there comes a sudden heat, The gravest citizen seems to lose his head, The king is scared, the soldier will not fight, The little boys begin to shoot and stab, A kingdom topples over with a shriek Like an old woman, and down rolls the world In mock heroics stranger than our own; Revolts, republics, revolutions, most No graver than a schoolboys" barring out; Too comic for the serious things they are, Too solemn for the comic touches in them, Like our wild Princess with as wise a dream As some of theirs--G.o.d bless the narrow seas!
I wish they were a whole Atlantic broad."
"Have patience," I replied, "ourselves are full Of social wrong; and maybe wildest dreams Are but the needful preludes of the truth: For me, the genial day, the happy crowd, The sport half-science, fill me with a faith.
This fine old world of ours is but a child Yet in the go-cart. Patience! Give it time To learn its limbs: there is a hand that guides."
In such discourse we gained the garden rails, And there we saw Sir Walter where he stood, Before a tower of crimson holly-hoaks, Among six boys, head under head, and looked No little lily-handed Baronet he, A great broad-shouldered genial Englishman, A lord of fat prize-oxen and of sheep, A raiser of huge melons and of pine, A patron of some thirty charities, A pamphleteer on guano and on grain, A quarter-sessions chairman, abler none; Fair-haired and redder than a windy morn; Now shaking hands with him, now him, of those That stood the nearest--now addressed to speech-- Who spoke few words and pithy, such as closed Welcome, farewell, and welcome for the year To follow: a shout rose again, and made The long line of the approaching rookery swerve From the elms, and shook the branches of the deer From slope to slope through distant ferns, and rang Beyond the bourn of sunset; O, a shout More joyful than the city-roar that hails Premier or king! Why should not these great Sirs Give up their parks some dozen times a year To let the people breathe? So thrice they cried, I likewise, and in groups they streamed away.
But we went back to the Abbey, and sat on, So much the gathering darkness charmed: we sat But spoke not, rapt in nameless reverie, Perchance upon the future man: the walls Blackened about us, bats wheeled, and owls whooped, And gradually the powers of the night, That range above the region of the wind, Deepening the courts of twilight broke them up Through all the silent s.p.a.ces of the worlds, Beyond all thought into the Heaven of Heavens.
Last little Lilia, rising quietly, Disrobed the glimmering statue of Sir Ralph From those rich silks, and home well-pleased we went.