Said Ida, tremulously, 'so all unlike

'But I,'

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 thro' the crust of iron moods

That mask'd thee from men's reverence up, and forced Sweet love on pranks of saucy boyhood: now,

Giv'n back to life, to life indeed, thro' 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 kill'd 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 noble end,

And so thro' 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 pray'd the men, the women : I gave assent: 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 banter'd 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,

N

Had ever seem'd to wrestle with burlesque,
And drove us, last, to quite a solemn close-
They hated banter, wish'd for something real,
A gallant fight, a noble 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 touch'd her; and she sat, she pluck'd the grass, 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 cramm'd 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 climb'd 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 massive 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! God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off,

And keeps our Britain, whole within herself,