A golden broach: beneath an emerald plane

Sits Diotima, teaching him that died

Of hemlock; our device; wrought to the life;
She rapt upon her subject, he on her:

For there are schools for all." "And yet" I said.
"Methinks I have not found among them all
One anatomic." "Nay, we thought of that,"
She answer'd, "but it pleased us not in truth
We shudder but to dream our maids should ape
Those monstrous males that carve the living hound,
And cram him with the fragments of the grave,
Or in the dark dissolving human heart,
And holy secrets of this microcosm,

Dabbling a shameless hand with shameful jest,
Encarnalize their spirits: yet we know

Knowledge is knowledge, and this matter hangs :
Howbeit ourself, foreseeing casualty,

Nor willing men should come among us, learnt,
For many weary moons before we came,
This craft of healing. Were you sick, ourself
Would tend upon you. To your question now,
Which touches on the workman and his work.
Let there be light and there was light: 'tis so:

For was, and is, and will be, are but is ;

And all creation is one act at once,

The birth of light: but we that are not all,

As parts, can see but parts, now this, now that,

And live, perforce, from thought to thought, and make

One act a phantom of succession: thus

Our weakness somehow shapes the shadow, Time;

But in the shadow will we work, and mould

The woman to the fuller day."

She spake

With kindled eyes: we rode a league beyond, And, o'er a bridge of pinewood crossing, came

On flowery levels underneath the crag,

Full of all beauty. "O how sweet" I said

(For I was half-oblivious of my mask)

"To linger here with one that loved us." "Yea"

She answer'd "or with fair philosophies

That lift the fancy; for indeed these fields

Are lovely, lovelier not the Elysian lawns,

Where paced the Demigods of old, and saw
The soft white vapour streak the crowned towers
Built to the Sun :" then, turning to her maids,

"Pitch our pavilion here upon the sward;

Lay out the viands." At the word, they raised
A tent of satin, elaborately wrought

With fair Corinna's triumph; here she stood,
Engirt with many a florid maiden-cheek,
The woman-conqueror; woman-conquer'd there
The bearded Victor of ten-thousand hymns,
And all the men mourn'd at his side: but we
Set forth to climb; then, climbing, Cyril kept
With Psyche, with Melissa Florian, I

With mine affianced. Many a little hand
Glanced like a touch of sunshine on the rocks,
Many a light foot shone like a jewel set

In the dark crag: and then we turn'd, we wound About the cliffs, the copses, out and in, Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names Of shale and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff, Amygdaloid and trachyte, till the Sun

Grew broader toward his death and fell, and all The rosy heights came out above the lawns.

THE splendour falls on castle walls

And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,

And the wild cataract leaps in glory.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!

O sweet and far from cliff and scar

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,

And grow for ever and for ever.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

IV.

HERE sinks the nebulous star we call

the Sun,

If that hypothesis of theirs be sound" Said Ida; "let us down and rest;" and we Down from the lean and wrinkled precipices, By every coppice-feather'd chasm and cleft, Dropt thro' the ambrosial gloom to where below No bigger than a glow-worm shone the tent Lamp-lit from the inner. Once she lean'd on me, Descending; once or twice she lent her hand, And blissful palpitations in the blood, Stirring a sudden transport rose and fell.

But when we planted level feet, and dipt Beneath the satin dome and enter'd in,