Ladies’ Edinburgh Magazine > Volume 4

172 The Ladies^ Edinbu7'gh Magazine.
For when would you, my liege, or you, or you,
In leaden contemplation have found out
Such fiery numbers as the prompting eyes
Of beauty's tutors have enriched you with ]
Other slow arts entirely keep the brain ;
And therefore finding heavy practisers.
Scarce show a harvest of their heavy toil:
But love, first learned in a lady's eyes.
Lives not alone immured within the brain;
But, with the motion of all elements,
Courses as swift as thought through every power,
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye ;
A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind,
A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound,
When the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd.
Love's feeling is more soft and sensible
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails;
Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste ;
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive.
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire ;
They are the books, the arts, the academies.
That show, contain, and nourish all the world,
Else none at all in ought proves excellent.
Then fools you were these women to forswear,
Or keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools.''
And Tennyson:
' " The woman's cause is man's ; they rise or sink
Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free ;
For woman is not undeveloped man.
But diverse : could we make her as the man,
Sweet Love were slain; his dearest bond is this,
Not like to like, but like in difference.
Yet in the long years, liker must they grow ;
The man be more of woman, she of man;
He gain in sweetness, and in moral height,
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;
She, mental breadth, nor fail in childward care,
Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind;
Till at the last she set herself to man.
Like perfect music unto noble words;
And so those twain upon the skirts of Time
Sit side by side, full summ'd in all their powers,
Dispensing harvest, sowing the To be,
Self-reverent each, and reverencing each,
Distinct in individualities,
But like each other, even as those who love.
Then comes the statelier Eden back to man.
Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm,
Then springs the coming race of human kind.
1 Love's Labour's Lost, Act iv. Scene iii.