What were I nigher this although we dashed Your cities into shards with catapults, She would not love;--or brought her chained, a slave, The lifting of whose eyelash is my lord, Not ever would she love; but brooding turn The book of scorn, till all my flitting chance Were caught within the record of her wrongs, And crushed to death: and rather, Sire, than this I would the old God of war himself were dead, Forgotten, rusting on his iron hills, Rotting on some wild shore with ribs of wreck, Or like an old-world mammoth bulked in ice, Not to be molten out.'
And roughly spake My father, 'Tut, you know them not, the girls.
Boy, when I hear you prate I almost think That idiot legend credible.Look you, Sir!
Man is the hunter; woman is his game:
The sleek and shining creatures of the chase, We hunt them for the beauty of their skins;They love us for it, and we ride them down.
Wheedling and siding with them! Out! for shame!
Boy, there's no rose that's half so dear to them As he that does the thing they dare not do, Breathing and sounding beauteous battle, comes With the air of the trumpet round him, and leaps in Among the women, snares them by the score Flattered and flustered, wins, though dashed with death He reddens what he kisses: thus I won You mother, a good mother, a good wife, Worth winning; but this firebrand--gentleness To such as her! if Cyril spake her true, To catch a dragon in a cherry net, To trip a tigress with a gossamer Were wisdom to it.'
'Yea but Sire,' I cried, 'Wild natures need wise curbs.The soldier? No:
What dares not Ida do that she should prize The soldier? I beheld her, when she rose The yesternight, and storming in extremes, Stood for her cause, and flung defiance down Gagelike to man, and had not shunned the death, No, not the soldier's: yet I hold her, king, True woman: you clash them all in one, That have as many differences as we.
The violet varies from the lily as far As oak from elm: one loves the soldier, one The silken priest of peace, one this, one that, And some unworthily; their sinless faith, A maiden moon that sparkles on a sty, Glorifying clown and satyr; whence they need More breadth of culture: is not Ida right?
They worth it? truer to the law within?
Severer in the logic of a life?
Twice as magnetic to sweet influences Of earth and heaven? and she of whom you speak, My mother, looks as whole as some serene Creation minted in the golden moods Of sovereign artists; not a thought, a touch, But pure as lines of green that streak the white Of the first snowdrop's inner leaves; I say, Not like the piebald miscellany, man, Bursts of great heart and slips in sensual mire, But whole and one: and take them all-in-all, Were we ourselves but half as good, as kind, As truthful, much that Ida claims as right Had ne'er been mooted, but as frankly theirs As dues of Nature.To our point: not war:
Lest I lose all.'
'Nay, nay, you spake but sense'
Said Gama.'We remember love ourself In our sweet youth; we did not rate him then This red-hot iron to be shaped with blows.
You talk almost like Ida: ~she~ can talk;And there is something in it as you say:
But you talk kindlier: we esteem you for it.--He seems a gracious and a gallant Prince, I would he had our daughter: for the rest, Our own detention, why, the causes weighed, Fatherly fears--you used us courteously--We would do much to gratify your Prince--We pardon it; and for your ingress here Upon the skirt and fringe of our fair land, you did but come as goblins in the night, Nor in the furrow broke the ploughman's head, Nor burnt the grange, nor bussed the milking-maid, Nor robbed the farmer of his bowl of cream:
But let your Prince (our royal word upon it, He comes back safe) ride with us to our lines, And speak with Arac: Arac's word is thrice As ours with Ida: something may be done--I know not what--and ours shall see us friends.
You, likewise, our late guests, if so you will, Follow us: who knows? we four may build some plan Foursquare to opposition.'
Here he reached White hands of farewell to my sire, who growled An answer which, half-muffled in his beard, Let so much out as gave us leave to go.
Then rode we with the old king across the lawns Beneath huge trees, a thousand rings of Spring In every bole, a song on every spray Of birds that piped their Valentines, and woke Desire in me to infuse my tale of love In the old king's ears, who promised help, and oozed All o'er with honeyed answer as we rode And blossom-fragrant slipt the heavy dews Gathered by night and peace, with each light air On our mailed heads: but other thoughts than Peace Burnt in us, when we saw the embattled squares, And squadrons of the Prince, trampling the flowers With clamour: for among them rose a cry As if to greet the king; they made a halt;The horses yelled; they clashed their arms; the drum Beat; merrily-blowing shrilled the martial fife;And in the blast and bray of the long horn And serpent-throated bugle, undulated The banner: anon to meet us lightly pranced Three captains out; nor ever had I seen Such thews of men: the midmost and the highest Was Arac: all about his motion clung The shadow of his sister, as the beam Of the East, that played upon them, made them glance Like those three stars of the airy Giant's zone, That glitter burnished by the frosty dark;And as the fiery Sirius alters hue, And bickers into red and emerald, shone Their morions, washed with morning, as they came.
And I that prated peace, when first I heard War-music, felt the blind wildbeast of force, Whose home is in the sinews of a man, Stir in me as to strike: then took the king His three broad sons; with now a wandering hand And now a pointed finger, told them all:
A common light of smiles at our disguise Broke from their lips, and, ere the windy jest Had laboured down within his ample lungs, The genial giant, Arac, rolled himself Thrice in the saddle, then burst out in words.
'Our land invaded, 'sdeath! and he himself Your captive, yet my father wills not war:
And, 'sdeath! myself, what care I, war or no?
but then this question of your troth remains:
