een;_
_But "Oh!" cried the maiden, binding her tresses,_
_"'Tis only a page that carols unseen,_ 260
_Crumbling your hounds their messes!")_

_Is she wronged?--To the rescue of her honor,_
_My heart!_
_Is she poor?--What costs it to be styled a donor?_
_Merely an earth to cleave, a sea to part_. 265
_But that fortune should have thrust all this upon her!_
_("Nay, list!"--bade Kate the Queen;_
_And still cried the maiden, binding her tresses,_
_"'Tis only a page that carols unseen_
_Fitting your hawks their jesses!")_ 270

[PIPPA _passes._

JULES _resumes_

What name was that the little girl sang forth?
Kate? The Cornaro, doubtless, who renounced
The crown of Cyprus to be lady here
At Asolo, where still her memory stays,
And peasants sing how once a certain page 275
Pined for the grace of her so far above
His power of doing good to, "Kate the Queen--
She never could be wronged, be poor," he sighed,
"Need him to help her!"
Yes, a bitter thing
To see our lady above all need of us; 280
Yet so we look ere we will love; not I,
But the world looks so. If whoever loves
Must be, in some sort, god or worshiper,
The blessing or the blest-one, queen or page,
Why should we always choose the page's part? 285
Here is a woman with utter need of me--
I find myself queen here, it seems!
How strange!
Look at the woman here with the new soul,
Like my own Psyche--fresh upon her lips
Alit the visionary butterfly, 290
Waiting my word to enter and make bright,
Or flutter off and leave all blank as first.
This body had no soul before, but slept
Or stirred, was beauteous or ungainly, free
From taint or foul with stain, as outward things 295
Fastened their image on its passiveness;
Now, it will wake, feel, live--or die again!
Shall to produce form out of unshaped stuff
Be Art--and further, to evoke a soul
From form be nothing? This new soul is mine! 300

Now, to kill Lutwyche, w