Between the Northern and the Southern morn.'

Then came a postscript dash'd across the rest. 'See that there be no traitors in your camp:

We seem a nest of traitors-none to trust
Since our arms fail'd-this Egypt-plague of men !
Almost our maids were better at their homes,

Than thus man-girdled here: indeed I think
Our chiefest comfort is the little child

Of one unworthy mother; which she left:
She shall not have it back: the child shall grow

To prize the authentic mother of her mind.

I took it for an hour in mine own bed

This morning: there the tender orphan hands
Felt at my heart, and seem'd to charm from thence
The wrath I nursed against the world: farewell.'

I ceased; he said: 'Stubborn, but she may sit Upon a king's right hand in thunder-storms, And breed up warriors! See now, tho' yourself

Be dazzled by the wildfire Love to sloughs

That swallow common sense, the spindling king,

This Gama swamp'd in lazy tolerance.

When the man wants weight, the woman takes it up,

And topples down the scales; but this is fixt

As are the roots of earth and base of all;

Man for the field and woman for the hearth:

Man for the sword and for the needle she:

Man with the head and woman with the heart:
Man to command and woman to obey;

All else confusion. Look you! the gray mare
Is ill to live with, when her whinny shrills
From tile to scullery, and her small goodman
Shrinks in his arm-chair while the fires of Hell

Mix with his hearth: but you-she's yet a colt-
Take, break her: strongly groom'd and straitly curb'd
She might not rank with those detestable

That let the bantling scald at home, and brawl

Their rights or wrongs like potherbs in the street.

They say she's comely; there's the fairer chance :

K

I like her none the less for rating at her!

Besides, the woman wed is not as we,

But suffers change of frame. A lusty brace
Of twins may weed her of her folly. Boy,
The bearing and the training of a child

Is woman's wisdom.'

Thus the hard old king:

I took my leave, for it was nearly noon :
I pored upon her letter which I held,
And on the little clause 'take not his life: '
I mused on that wild morning in the woods,
And on the Follow, follow, thou shalt win:
I thought on all the wrathful king had said,
And how the strange betrothment was to end:
Then I remember'd that burnt sorcerer's curse

That one should fight with shadows and should fall;

And like a flash the weird affection came:

King, camp and college turn'd to hollow shows;

I seem'd to move in old memorial tilts,

And doing battle with forgotten ghosts,

To dream myself the shadow of a dream :

And ere I woke it was the point of

noon,

The lists were ready. Empanoplied and plumed
We enter'd in, and waited, fifty there
Opposed to fifty, till the trumpet blared
At the barrier like a wild horn in a land
Of echoes, and a moment, and once more
The trumpet, and again: at which the storm
Of galloping hoofs bare on the ridge of spears
And riders front to front, until they closed
In conflict with the crash of shivering points,
And thunder. Yet it seem'd a dream; I dream'd

Of fighting. On his haunches rose the steed,
And into fiery splinters leapt the lance,

And out of stricken helmets sprang the fire.

A noble dream! what was it else I saw ?

Part sat like rocks: part reel'd but kept their seats: Part roll'd on the earth and rose again and drew:

Part stumbled mixt with floundering horses. Down 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; till I thought, can this be he
From Gama's dwarfish loins? if this be so,

The mother makes us most-and in my dream
I glanced aside, and saw the palace-front
Alive with fluttering scarfs and ladies' eyes,
And highest, among the statues, statuelike,
Between a cymbal'd Miriam and a Jael,
With Psyche's babe, was Ida watching us,
A single band of gold about her hair,

Like a Saint's glory up in heaven: but she
No saint-inexorable-no tenderness-
Too hard, too cruel: yet she sees me fight,
Yea, let her see me fall! with that I drave
Among the thickest and bore down a Prince,
And Cyril, one. Yea, let me make my dream