Xxxviii

But no, play out your rôle I' the pageant! 'T is not fit your phantom leave the stage: I want you, there, to make you, here, confess you wage Successful warfare, pique those proud ones, and advance Claim to ... equality? nay, but predominance In physique o'er them all, where Helen heads the scene Closed by its tiniest of tail-tips, pert Fifine. How ravishingly pure you stand in pale constraint! My new-created shape, without or touch or taint, Inviolate of life and worldliness and sin-- Fettered, I hold my flower, her own cup's weight would win From off the tall slight stalk a-top of which she turns And trembles, makes appeal to one who roughly earns Her thanks instead of blame, (did lily only know,) By thus constraining length of lily, letting snow Of cup-crown, that 's her face, look from its guardian stake, Superb on all that crawls beneath, and mutely make Defiance, with the mouth's white movement of disdain, To all that stoops, retires, and hovers round again! How windingly the limbs delay to lead up, reach Where, crowned, the head waits calm: as if reluctant, each, That eye should traverse quick such lengths of loveliness, From feet, which just are found embedded in the dress Deep swathed about with folds and flowings virginal, Up to the pleated breasts, rebellious 'neath their pall, As if the vesture's snow were moulding sleep not death, Must melt and so release; whereat, from the fine sheath, The flower-cup-crown starts free, the face is unconcealed, And what shall now divert me, once the sweet face revealed, From all I loved so long, so lingeringly left?