Unshaken, clinging to her purpose, firm
Though compassed by two armies and the noise
Of arms; and standing like a stately pine
Set in a cataract on an island-crag,

When storm is on the heights, and right and left
Sucked from the dark heart of the long hills roll
The torrents, dashed to the vale: and yet her will
Bred will in me to overcome it or fall.

But when I told the king that I was pledged
To fight in tourney for my bride, he clashed
His iron palms together with a cry;
Himself would tilt it out among the lads
But overborne by all his bearded lords

With reasons drawn from age and state, perforce
He yielded, wroth and red, with fierce demur:
And many a bold knight started up in heat,
And sware to combat for my claim till death.

All on this side the palace ran the field
Flat to the garden-wall: and likewise here,
Above the garden's glowing blossom-belts,
A columned entry shone and marble stairs,
And great bronze valves, embossed with Tomyris
And what she did to Cyrus after fight,
But now fast barred: so here upon the flat
All that long morn the lists were hammered up,
And all that morn the heralds to and fro,
With message and defiance, went and came;
Last, Ida's answer, in a royal hand,

But shaken here and there, and rolling words
Oration-like. I kissed it and I read.

“O brother, you have known the pangs we felt, What heats of indignation, when we heard Of those that iron-cramped their women's feet; Of lands in which at the altar the poor bride Gives her harsh groom for bridal-gift a scourge; Of living hearts that crack within the fire

Where smoulder their dead despots; and of those,—
Mothers, that, all prophetic pity, fling

Their pretty maids in the running flood, and swoops
The vulture, beak and talon, at the heart
Made for all noble motion: and I saw

That equal baseness lived in sleeker times
With smoother men: the old leaven leavened all:
Millions of throats would bawl for civil rights,
No woman named: therefore I set my face
Against all men and lived but for mine own.
Far off from men I built a fold for them:
I stored it full of rich memorial:

I fenced it round with gallant institutes,
And biting laws to scare the beasts of prey,
And prospered; till a rout of saucy boys

Brake on us at our books, and marred our peace,
Masked like our maids, blustering I know not what
Of insolence and love, some pretext held
Of baby troth, invalid, since my will

Sealed not the bond-the striplings!-for their sport!

I tamed my leopards: shall I not tame these?
Or you? or I? for since you think me touched
In honor—what, I would not aught of false-
Is not our cause pure? and whereas I know
Your prowess, Arac, and what mother's blood
You draw from, fight; you failing, I abide
What end soever, fail you will not. Still
Take not his life: he risked it for my own;
His mother lives: yet whatsoe'er you do,
Fight and fight well; strike, and strike home.

dear

Brothers, the woman's Angel guards you, you
The sole men to be mingled with our cause,
The sole men we shall prize in the after time,
Your very armor hallowed, and your statues
Reared, sung to, when, this gad-fly brushed aside,
We plant a solid foot into the Time,

And mould a generation strong to move

With claim on claim from right to right, till she
Whose name is yoked with children's, know herself;
And knowledge in our own land make her free,
And, ever following those two crowned twins,
Commerce and conquest, shower the fiery grain
Of Freedom broadcast over all that orbs
Between the Northern and the Southern morn."

Then came a postcript dashed across the rest.
"See that there be no traitors in your camp:
We seem a nest of traitors-none to trust
Since our arms failed-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 seemed 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, though yourself' Be dazzled by the wildfire Love to sloughs That swallow common sense, the spindling king, This Gama swamped 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 groomed and straitly curbed,

She might not rank with those detestable

That let the bantling scald at home, and brawl
Their rights or wrongs like pot-herbs in the street.
They say she's comely; there's the fairer chance:
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 remembered 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 turned to hollow shows;
I seemed 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 entered 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 seemed a dream; I dreamed
Of fighting. On his haunches rose the steed,
And into fiery splinters leapt the lance,
And out of stricken helmets sprang the fire.
Part sat like rocks: part reeled but kept their seats:
Part rolled 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 rained, as here and everywhere
He rode the mellay, lord of the ringing lists,
And all the plain,-brand, mace, and shaft, and
shield,

Shocked, like an iron-clanging anvil banged
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, statue-like,
Between a cymbaled 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
All that I would. But that large-moulded man,
His visage all agrin as at a wake,

Made at me through 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 champaign till it strikes