Part 20

—Look, lady, where yon river winds its line Toward sunset, and receives on breast and face The splendour of fair life: to be divine, ’Tis nature bids you be to nature true, Flowing with beauty, lending earth your grace, Reflecting heaven in clearness you.

—Sir, you speak well: your friend no word vouchsafes. To flow with beauty, breeding fools and worse, Cowards and worse: at such fair life she chafes, Who is not wholly of the nursery, Nor of your schools: we share the primal curse; Together shake it off, say we!

XLI

—Hear, then, my friend, madam! Tongue-restrained he stands Till words are thoughts, and thoughts, like swords enriched With traceries of the artificer’s hands, Are fire-proved steel to cut, fair flowers to view.— Do I hear him? Oh, he is bewitched, bewitched! Heed him not! Traitress beauties you!

XLII

—We have won a champion, sisters, and a sage! —Ladies, you win a guest to a good feast! —Sir spokesman, sneers are weakness veiling rage. —Of weakness, and wise men, you have the key. —Then are there fresher mornings mounting East Than ever yet have dawned, sing we!

XLIII

—False ends as false began, madam, be sure! —What lure there is the pure cause purifies! —Who purifies the victim of the lure? —That soul which bids us our high light pursue. —Some heights are measured down: the wary wise Shun Reason in the masque with you!

XLIV

—Sir, for the friend you bring us, take our thanks. Yes, Beauty was of old this barren goal; A thing with claws; and brute-like in her pranks! But could she give more loyal guarantee Than wooing Wisdom, that in her a soul Has risen? Adieu: content are we!

XLV

Those ladies led their captive to the flood’s Green edge. He floating with them seemed the most Fool-flushed old noddy ever crowned with buds. Happier than I! Then, why not wiser too? For he that lives with Beauty, he may boast His comrade over me and you.

XLVI

Have women nursed some dream since Helen sailed Over the sea of blood the blushing star, That beauty, whom frail man as Goddess hailed, When not possessing her (for such is he!), Might in a wondering season seen afar, Be tamed to say not ‘I,’ but ‘we’?

XLVII

And shall they make of Beauty their estate, The fortress and the weapon of their sex? Shall she in her frost-brilliancy dictate, More queenly than of old, how we must woo, Ere she will melt? The halter’s on our necks, Kick as it likes us, I and you.

XLVIII

Certain it is, if Beauty has disdained Her ancient conquests, with an aim thus high: If this, if that, if more, the fight is gained. But can she keep her followers without fee? Yet ah! to hear anew those ladies cry, He who’s for us, for him are we!

BALLADS AND POEMS OF TRAGIC LIFE

THE TWO MASKS

MELPOMENE among her livid people, Ere stroke of lyre, upon Thaleia looks, Warned by old contests that one museful ripple Along those lips of rose with tendril hooks Forebodes disturbance in the springs of pathos, Perchance may change of masks midway demand, Albeit the man rise mountainous as Athos, The woman wild as Cape Leucadia stand.

For this the Comic Muse exacts of creatures Appealing to the fount of tears: that they Strive never to outleap our human features, And do Right Reason’s ordinance obey, In peril of the hum to laughter nighest. But prove they under stress of action’s fire Nobleness, to that test of Reason highest, She bows: she waves them for the loftier lyre.

ARCHDUCHESS ANNE

IN middle age an evil thing Befell Archduchess Anne: She looked outside her wedding-ring Upon a princely man.

Count Louis was for horse and arms; And if its beacon waved, For love; but ladies had not charms To match a danger braved.

III

On battlefields he was the bow Bestrung to fly the shaft: In idle hours his heart would flow As winds on currents waft.

His blood was of those warrior tribes That streamed from morning’s fire, Whom now with traps and now with bribes The wily Council wire.