"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!

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

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

Or at times I read there, hoarsely, some new poem of my making, Poets ever fail in reading their own verses to their worth, For the echo in you breaks upon the

words which you are speaking, And the chariot-wheels jar in the gate through which you drive them forth.

After, when we were grown tired of books, the silence round us flinging

A slow arm of sweet compression, felt with beatings at the breast,

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,

"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.

There, I maddened! her words stung me! Life swept through me into fever,

And my soul sprang up astonished; sprang full-statured in an hour: Know you what it is when anguish, with apocalyptic NEVER, To a Pythian height dilates you,

and despair sublimes to power?

From my brain the soul-wings budded!-waved a flame about my body,

Whence conventions coiled to ashes: I felt self-drawn out, as man, From amalgamate false natures; and I saw the skies grow ruddy With the deepening feet of angels, and I knew what spirits can.

I plucked up her social fictions, bloody-rooted though leaf-verdant,

Trod them down with words of shaming, all the purple and the gold,

All the "landed stakes" and lordships, all that spirits pure and ardent

Are cast out of love and honor because chancing not to hold.

66

"For myself I do not argue," said I, though I love you, madam; But for better souls that nearer to the height of yours have trod. And this age shows to my thinking, still more infidels to Adam, Than directly, by profession, simple infidels to God.

"Learn more reverence, madam, not for rank or wealth, that needs no learning; That comes quickly-quick as sin does, ay, and culminates to sin;

But for Adam's seed, MAN! Trust me, 'tis a clay above your scorning,

With God's image stamped upon it, and God's kindling breath within.

"What right have you, madam, gazing in your palace-mirror

daily, Getting so by heart your beauty, which all others must adore, While you draw the golden ringlets down your fingers, to vow gayly

You will wed no man that's only good to God, and nothing more?