Makes noble thro' the sensuous organism

That which is higher. O lift

your natures up:

Embrace our aims: work out your freedom.

Knowledge is now no more a fountain seal'd:

Drink deep, until the habits of the slave,

The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite

And slander, die. Better not be at all
Than not be noble. Leave us: you may go:
To-day the Lady Psyche will harangue

The fresh arrivals of the week before;

For they press in from all the provinces,

And fill the hive.'

Girls,

She spoke, and bowing waved

Dismissal: back again we crost the court

To Lady Psyche's: as we enter'd in,

There sat along the forms, like morning doves
That sun their milky bosoms on the thatch,

A patient range of pupils; she herself

Erect behind a desk of satin-wood,

A quick brunette, well-moulded, falcon-eyed,

D

And on the hither side, or so she look'd,

Of twenty summers. At her left, a child,
In shining draperies, headed like a star,
Her maiden babe, a double April old,
Aglaïa slept. We sat: the Lady glanced:
Then Florian, but no livelier than the dame
That whisper'd' Asses' ears' among the sedge,
'My sister.' 'Comely too by all that's fair'
Said Cyril. O hush, hush!' and she began.

'This world was once a fluid haze of light, Till toward the centre set the starry tides, And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast

The planets: then the monster, then the man;

Tattoo'd or woaded, winter-clad in skins,

Raw from the prime, and crushing down his mate; As yet we find in barbarous isles, and here

Among the lowest.'

Thereupon she took

A bird's-eye-view of all the ungracious past;

Glanced at the legendary Amazon

As emblematic of a nobler age;

Appraised the Lycian custom, spoke of those
That lay at wine with Lar and Lucumo;

Ran down the Persian, Grecian, Roman lines
Of empire, and the woman's state in each,
How far from just; till warming with her theme
She fulmined out her scorn of laws Salique
And little-footed China, touch'd on Mahomet
With much contempt, and came to chivalry:
When some respect, however slight, was paid
To woman, superstition all awry:

However then commenced the dawn: a beam

Had slanted forward, falling in a land

Of promise; fruit would follow. Deep, indeed,
Their debt of thanks to her who first had dared
To leap the rotten pales of prejudice,

Disyoke their necks from custom, and assert

None lordlier than themselves but that which made Woman and man. She had founded; they must build.

Here might they learn whatever men were taught:

Let them not fear: some said their heads were less :

Some men's were small; not they the least of men ; For often fineness compensated size:

Besides the brain was like the hand, and grew

With using; thence the man's, if more was more;

He took advantage of his strength to be

First in the field: some ages had been lost;

But woman ripen'd earlier, and her life

Was longer; and albeit their glorious names

Were fewer, scatter'd stars, yet since in truth

The highest is the measure of the man,

And not the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay,

Nor those horn-handed breakers of the glebe,

But Homer, Plato, Verulam; even so

With woman and in arts of government

Elizabeth and others; arts of war

The peasant Joan and others; arts of

Sappho and others vied with any man :

grace

And, last not least, she who had left her place,

And bow'd her state to them, that they might grow

To use and power on this Oasis, lapt

In the arms of leisure, sacred from the blight

Of ancient influence and scorn.'

At last

She rose upon a wind of prophecy

Dilating on the future; 'everywhere

Two heads in council, two beside the hearth,

Two in the tangled business of the world,

Two in the liberal offices of life,

Two plummets dropt for one to sound the abyss
Of science, and the secrets of the mind:
Musician, painter, sculptor, critic, more :

And everywhere the broad and bounteous Earth

Should bear a double growth of those rare souls, Poets, whose thoughts enrich the blood of the world.'

She ended here, and beckon'd us: the rest Parted; and, glowing full-faced welcome, she Began to address us, and was moving on