And me that morning Walter show’d the house,
Greek, set with busts: from vases in the hall
Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their names,
Grew side by side; and on the pavement lay
Carved stones of the Abbey-ruin in the park,
Huge Ammonites, and the first bones of Time;
And on the tables every clime and age
Jumbled together; celts and calumets,
Claymore and snowshoe, toys in lava, fans
Of sandal, amber, ancient rosaries,
Laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere,
The cursed Malayan crease, and battle-clubs
From the isles of palm: and higher on the walls,
Betwixt the monstrous horns of elk and deer,
His own forefathers’ arms and armour hung,

And ‘this’ he said ‘was Hugh’s at Agincourt;
And that was old Sir Ralph’s at Ascalon:
A good knight he! we keep a chronicle
With all about him’—which he brought, and I
Dived in a hoard of tales that dealt with knights,
Half-legend, half-historic, counts and kings
Who laid about them at their wills and died;
And mixt with these, a lady, one that arm’d
Her own fair head, and sallying thro’ the gate,
Had beat her foes with slaughter from her walls.

    ‘O miracle of women,’ said the book,
‘O noble heart who, being strait-besieged
By this wild king to force her to his wish,
Nor bent, nor broke, nor shunn’d a soldier’s death,
But now when all was lost or seem’d as lost—
Her stature more than mortal in the burst
Of sunrise, her arm lifted, eyes on fire—
Brake with a blast of trumpets from the gate,
And, falling on them like a thunderbolt,
She trampled some beneath her horses’ heels,
And some were whelm’d with missiles of the wall,
And some were push’d with lances from the rock,
And part were drown’d within the whirling brook:
O miracle of noble womanhood!’

    So sang the gallant glorious chronicle;
And, I all rapt in this, ‘Come out,’ he said,
‘To the Abbey: there is Aunt Elizabeth
And sister Lilia with the rest.’ We went
(I kept the book and had my finger in it)
Down thro’ the park: strange was the sight to me;
For all the sloping pasture murmur’d, sown
With happy faces and with holiday.
There moved the multitude, a thousand heads:
The patient leaders of their Institute
Taught them with facts. One rear’d a font of stone
And drew, from butts of water on the slope,
The fountain of the moment, playing now
A twisted snake, and now a rain of pearls,
Or steep-up spout whereon the gilded ball
Danced like a wisp: and somewhat lower down
A man with knobs and wires and vials fired
A cannon: Echo answer’d in her sleep
From hollow fields: and here were telescopes
For azure views; and there a group of girls
In circle waited, whom the electric shock
Dislink’d with shrieks and laughter: round the lake
A little clock-work steamer paddling plied
And shook the lilies: perch’d about the knolls
A dozen angry models jetted steam:
A petty railway ran: a fire balloon
Rose gem-like up before the dusky groves
And dropt a fairy parachute and past:
And there thro’ twenty posts of telegraph
They flash’d a saucy message to and fro
Between the mimic stations; so that sport
Went hand in hand with Science; otherwhere
Pure sport: a herd of boys with clamour bowl’d
And stump’d the wicket; babies roll’d about
Like tumbled fruit in grass; and men and maids
Arranged a country dance, and flew thro’ light
And shadow, while the twangling violin
Struck up with Soldier-laddie, and overhead
The broad ambrosial aisles of lofty lime
Made noise with bees and breeze from end to end.

    Strange was the sight and smacking of the time;
And long we gazed, but satiated at length
Came to the ruins. High-arch’d and ivy-claspt,
Of finest Gothic lighter than a fire,
Thro’ one wide chasm of time and frost they gave
The park, the crowd, the house; but all within
The sward was trim as any garden lawn:
And here we lit on Aunt Elizabeth,
And Lilia with the rest, and lady friends
From neighbour seats: and there was Ralph himself,
A broken statue propt against the wall,
As gay as any. Lilia, wild with sport,
Half child half woman as she was, had wound
A scarf of orange round the stony helm,
And robed the shoulders in a rosy silk,
That made the old warrior from his ivied nook
Glow like a sunbeam: near his tomb a feast
Shone, silver-set; about it lay the guests,
And there we join’d them: then the maiden Aunt
Took this fair day for text, and from it preach’d
An universal culture for the crowd,
And all things great; but we, unworthier, told
Of college: he had climb’d across the spikes,
And he had squeezed himself betwixt the bars,
And he had breathed the Proctor’s dogs; and one
Discuss’d his tutor, rough to common men,
But honeying at the whisper of a lord;
And one the Master, as a rogue in grain
Veneer’d with sanctimonious theory.

    But while they talk’d, above their heads I saw
The feudal warrior lady-clad; which brought
My book to mind: and opening this I read
Of old Sir Ralph a page or two that rang
With tilt and tourney; then the tale of her
That drove her foes with slaughter from her walls,
And much I praised her nobleness, and ‘Where,’
Ask’d Walter, patting Lilia’s head (she lay
Beside him) ‘lives there such a woman now?’

    Quick answer’d Lilia, ‘There are thousands now
Such women, but convention beats them down:
It is but bringing up; no more than that:
You men have done it: how I hate you all!
Ah, were I something great! I wish I were
Some mighty poetess, I would shame you then,
That love to keep us children! O I wish
That I were some great princess, I would build
Far off from men a college like a man’s,
And I would teach them all that men are taught;
We are twice as quick!’ And here she shook aside
The hand that play’d the patron with her curls.

    And one said smiling ‘Pretty were the sight
If our old halls could change their sex, and flaunt
With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans,
And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair.
I think they should not wear our rusty gowns,
But move as rich as Emperor-moths, or Ralph
Who shines so in the corner; yet I fear,
If there were many Lilias in the brood,
However deep you might embower the nest,
Some boy would spy it.’
                            At this upon the sward
She tapt her tiny silken-sandal’d foot:
‘That’s your light way; but I would make it death
For any male thing but to peep at us.’

    Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laugh’d;
A rosebud set with little wilful thorns,
And sweet as English air could make her, she:
But Walter hail’d a score of names upon her,
And ‘petty Ogress,’ and ‘ungrateful Puss,’
And swore he long’d at college, only long’d,
All else was well, for she-society.
They boated and they cricketed; they talk’d
At wine, in clubs, of art, of politics;
They lost their weeks; they vext the souls of deans;
They rode; they betted; made a hundred friends,
And caught the blossom of the flying terms,
But miss’d the mignonette of Vivian-place,
The little hearth-flower Lilia. Thus he spoke,
Part banter, part affection.
                                    ’True,’ she said,
‘We doubt not that. O yes, you miss’d us much.
I’ll stake my ruby ring upon it you did.’

    She held it out; and as a parrot turns
Up thro’ gilt wires a crafty loving eye,
And takes a lady’s finger with all care,
And bites it for true heart and not for harm,
So he with Lilia’s. Daintily she shriek’d
And wrung it. ‘Doubt my word again!’ he said.
‘Come, listen! here is proof that you were miss’d:
We seven stay’d at Christmas up to read;
And there we took one tutor as to read:
The hard-grain’d Muses of the cube and square
Were out of season: never man, I think,
So moulder’d in a sinecure as he:
For while our cloisters echo’d frosty feet,
And our long walks were stript as bare as brooms,
We did but talk you over, pledge you all
In wassail; often, like as many girls—
Sick for the hollies and the yews of home—
As many little trifling Lilias—play’d
Charades and riddles as at Christmas here,
And what’s my thought and when and where and how,
And often told a tale from mouth to mouth
As here at Christmas.’
                            She remember’d that:
A pleasant game, she thought: she liked it more
Than magic music, forfeits, all the rest.
But these—what kind of tales did men tell men,
She wonder’d, by themselves?
                                        A half-disdain
Perch’d on the pouted blossom of her lips:
And Walter nodded at me; “He began,
The rest would follow, each in turn; and so
We forged a sevenfold story. Kind? what kind?
Chimeras, crotchets, Christmas solecisms,
Seven-headed monsters only made to kill
Time by the fire in winter.’
                                        ‘Kill him now,
The tyrant! kill him in the summer too,’
Said Lilia; ‘Why not now?’ the maiden Aunt.
‘Why not a summer’s as a winter’s tale?
A tale for summer as befits the time,
And something it should be to suit the place
Heroic, for a hero lies beneath,
Grave, solemn!’
                Walter warp’d his mouth at this
To something so mock-solemn, that I laugh’d
And Lilia woke with sudden-shrilling mirth
An echo like a ghostly woodpecker,
Hid in the ruins; till the maiden Aunt
(A little sense of wrong had touch’d her face
With colour) turn’d to me with ‘As you will;
Heroic if you will, or what you will,
Or be yourself your hero if you will.’

    ‘Take Lilia, then, for heroine,’ clamour’d he,
‘And make her some great Princess, six feet high,
Grand, epic, homicidal; and be you
The Prince to win her!’
                ‘Then follow me, the Prince,’
I answer’d, ‘each be hero in his turn!
Seven and yet one, like shadows in a dream.—
Heroic seems our Princess as required.—
But something made to suit with Time and place,
A Gothic ruin and a Grecian house,
A talk of college and of ladies’ rights,
A feudal knight in silken masquerade,
And, yonder, shrieks and strange experiments
For which the good Sir Ralph had burnt them all—
This were a medley! we should have him back
Who told the ‘Winter’s tale’ to do it for us.
No matter: we will say whatever comes.
And let the ladies sing us, if they will,
From time to time, some ballad or a song
To give us breathing-space.’
                                            So I began,
And the rest follow’d: and the women sang
Between the rougher voices of the men,
Like linnets in the pauses of the wind:
And here I give the story and the songs.