And your nobles wear their ermine on the outside, or walk blackly In the presence of the social law, as most ignoble men.

"Let the poets dream such dreaming! Madam, in these British Islands,

'Tis the substance that wanes ever, 'tis the symbol that exceeds; Soon we shall have nought but symbol! and for statues like this Silence,

Shall accept the rose's image, - in

another case, the weed's."

"Not so quickly!" she retorted,

"I confess where'er you go, you Find for things, names; -shows for actions, and pure gold for honor clear; But when all is run to symbol in the Social, I will throw you The world's book which now reads dryly, and sit down with Silence here."

Half in playfulness she spoke, I thought, and half in indignation;

Friends who listened laughed her words off while her lovers deemed her fair;

A fair woman-flushed with feeling, in her noble-lighted station Near the statue's white reposing,

and both bathed in sunny air! With the trees round, not so distant but you heard their vernal

Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which, if cut deep down the middle,

Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.

As I loved pure inspirations,

loved the graces, loved the virtues, In a Love content with writing his own name on desert sands.

Or at least I thought so purely!thought no idiot Hope was raising Any crown to crown Love's silence,silent Love that sat alone, Out, alas! the stag is like me, - he,

that tries to go on grazing With the great deep gun-wound in his neck, then reels with sudden moan.

It was thus I reeled! I told you that her hand had many suitors But she smiles them down imperially, as Venus did the waves; And with such a gracious coldness, that they cannot press their futures

On the present of her courtesy, which yieldingly enslaves.

And this morning, as I sat alone within the inner chamber, With the great saloon beyond it lost in pleasant thought serene, For I had been reading Camoens

that poem you remember, Which his lady's eyes are praised in,

as the sweetest ever seen;

And the book lay open, and my thought flew from it, taking from it

A vibration and impulsion to an end beyond its own,

As the branch of a green osier, when a child would overcome it, Springs up freely from his clasping

and goes swinging in the sun.

As I mused I heard a murmur, — it grew deep as it grew longerSpeakers using earnest language,

66

Lady Geraldine, you would!" And I heard a voice that pleaded ever on, in accents stronger, As a sense of reason gave it power to make its rhetoric good.

sion,

And be cautious lest the common air should injure or distrain.

For the rest, accomplished, upright,— ay, and standing by his order With a bearing not ungraceful; fond of art, and letters too; Just a good man made a proud man, as the sandy rocks that border A wild coast, by circumstances, in a regnant ebb and flow.

Thus I knew that voice,-I heard it and I could not help the hearkening:

In the room I stood up blindly, and my burning heart within Seemed to seethe and fuse my senses,

till they ran on all sides darkening,

And scorched, weighed like melted metal round my feet that stood therein.

And that voice, I heard it pleading, for love's sake, for wealth, position,

For the sake of liberal uses, and great actions to be done, And she interrupted gently, "Nay, my lord, the old tradition Of your Normans, by some worthier hand than mine is, should be won.' 99

"Ah, that white hand," he said quickly, - and in his he either drew it

Or attempted-for with gravity and instance she replied, "Nay, indeed, my lord, this talk is vain, and we had best eschew

it, And pass on like friends, to other points less easy to decide."

He had left her, -peradventure, when my footstep proved my coming, But for her, she half arose, then sat -grew scarlet and grew pale: Oh she trembled!-'tis so always with a worldly man or woman In the presence of true spirits,—what else can they do but quail?

Oh, she fluttered like a tame bird, in among its forest brothers Far too strong for it! then drooping, bowed her face upon her hands,

And I spake out wildly, fiercely, brutal truths of her and others! I, she planted in the desert, swathed her, windlike, with my sands.