The hard condition; but that she would loose Should keep within, door shut, and window barr'd. Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid The gateway; there she found her palfrey trapt Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity: The deep air listen'd round her as she rode, And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear. The little wide-mouth'd heads upon the spout Had cunning eyes to see: the barking cur Made her cheek flame: her palfrey's footfall shot Light horrors thro' her pulses: the blind walls Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity: Boring a little auger-hole in fear, Peep'd - but his eyes, before they had their will, And dropt before him. So the Powers, who wait Her bower; whence reissuing, robed and crown'd, THE TWO VOICES. A STILL Small voice spake unto me, "Thou art so full of misery, Were it not better not to be?" Then to the still small voice I said; "Let me not cast in endless shade What is so wonderfully made." To which the voice did urge reply; "To-day I saw the dragon-fly Come from the wells where he did lie. "An inner impulse rent the veil Of his old husk: from head to tail Came out clear plates of sapphire mail. "He dried his wings like gauze they grew: Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew A living flash of light he flew." I said, "When first the world began, "She gave him mind, the lordliest Proportion, and, above the rest, Dominion in the head and breast." Thereto the silent voice replied; "This truth within thy mind rehearse, That in a boundless universe Is boundless better, boundless worse. "Think you this mould of hopes and fears Could find no statelier than his peers In yonder hundred million spheres ?" It spake, moreover, in my mind: Then did my response clearer fall: "No compound of this earthly ball Is like another, all in all." To which he answer'd scoffingly; Who'll weep for thy deficiency? |