The Prince appealed to, though his care was less With what was spoken than the speaker's face, Took up the parable, confessed the truth Of all each ventured, and agreed with both. Nature, he said, and art, though now allied, Had not in all times thus walked side by side. Indeed the love of Nature, now so real, Was alien to the love of the ideal, The classic love which claimed as though of need Some living presence for each fountain-head, Each grove, each cavern, satyr, nymph, or god, A human shape unseen yet understood. This was the thought which lived in ancient art, Eschewing the waste places of the heart, And only on compulsion brought to face Brute Nature's aspect in its nakedness. Nature as Nature was a thought too rude For these, untempered in its solitude. It had no counterpart in our new love Of mountain, sea and forest. Then, each grove Asked for its statue, each perennial spring Its fountain. Solitude itself must bring Its echo. Every mountain top of Greece Beheld fair temples rise. A law of peace Reigned over art in protest at the mood Of social life which drenched the world in blood. All now had been reversed. Our modern creed Scouted the law that men were born to bleed. It turned from human nature, if untaught, And wrought mankind, perhaps and overwrought Into trim shapes, and then for its relief Rushed to the wilderness to vent its grief In lonely passion. Here it neither sought Nor found a presence which it needed not. It chose wild hills and barren seas. It saw Beauty in tumult, in revolt a law. Here it gave reins to its brute instincts. Here It owned no god, no guide, no arbiter. Its soul it must avenge of discipline, And Nature had gone naked from the shrine. This was its consolation. Of the score Who stood around him and who praised his lore, Perhaps no single listener understood The thought which underlay the Prince's mood, Or guessed its bitterness--not even she Who lent the moral to his mockery. Yet she was moved. In her too was a need Of consolation for too fair a creed, An impulse of rebellion. In her blood There lived a germ of Nature unsubdued, Which would not be appeased. She too had sought A refuge from the tyranny of thought In the brute impulses of sea and plain And cloud and forest far from haunts of men. A vain mad search. The fetters of her pride Galled her like sores. Griselda turned and sighed. That evening on the terrace, vaguely lit With paper lanterns and the infinite Display of those fair natural lamps, the stars, And 'neath the influence of the planet Mars Or Venus or another--which it was We best may judge by that which came to pass-- The Prince essayed his fortune.