'Three ladies of the Northern empire pray Your Highness would enroll them with your own, As Lady Psyche's pupils.' This I sealed: The seal was Cupid bent above a scroll, And o'er his head Uranian Venus hung, And raised the blinding bandage from his eyes: I gave the letter to be sent with dawn; And then to bed, where half in doze I seemed To float about a glimmering night, and watch A full sea glazed with muffled moonlight, swell On some dark shore just seen that it was rich. As through the land at eve we went, And plucked the ripened ears, We fell out, my wife and I, O we fell out I know not why, And kissed again with tears. And blessings on the falling out That all the more endears, When we fall out with those we love And kiss again with tears! For when we came where lies the child We lost in other years, There above the little grave, O there above the little grave, We kissed again with tears. II At break of day the College Portress came: She brought us Academic silks, in hue The lilac, with a silken hood to each, And zoned with gold; and now when these were on, And we as rich as moths from dusk cocoons, She, curtseying her obeisance, let us know The Princess Ida waited: out we paced, I first, and following through the porch that sang All round with laurel, issued in a court Compact of lucid marbles, bossed with lengths Of classic frieze, with ample awnings gay Betwixt the pillars, and with great urns of flowers. The Muses and the Graces, grouped in threes, Enringed a billowing fountain in the midst; And here and there on lattice edges lay Or book or lute; but hastily we past, And up a flight of stairs into the hall. There at a board by tome and paper sat, With two tame leopards couched beside her throne, All beauty compassed in a female form, The Princess; liker to the inhabitant Of some clear planet close upon the Sun, Than our man's earth; such eyes were in her head, And so much grace and power, breathing down From over her arched brows, with every turn Lived through her to the tips of her long hands, And to her feet. She rose her height, and said: