XLVII

     And shall they make of Beauty their estate,
     The fortress and the weapon of their sex? 
     Shall she in her frost-brilliancy dictate,
     More queenly than of old, how we must woo,
     Ere she will melt?  The halter’s on our necks,
     Kick as it likes us, I and you.

     XLVIII

     Certain it is, if Beauty has disdained
     Her ancient conquests, with an aim thus high: 
     If this, if that, if more, the fight is gained. 
     But can she keep her followers without fee? 
     Yet ah! to hear anew those ladies cry,
     He who’s for us, for him are we!

     The two masks

     Melpomene among her livid people,
     Ere stroke of lyre, upon Thaleia looks,
     Warned by old contests that one museful ripple
     Along those lips of rose with tendril hooks
     Forebodes disturbance in the springs of pathos,
     Perchance may change of masks midway demand,
     Albeit the man rise mountainous as Athos,
     The woman wild as Cape Leucadia stand.

     II

     For this the Comic Muse exacts of creatures
     Appealing to the fount of tears:  that they
     Strive never to outleap our human features,
     And do Right Reason’s ordinance obey,
     In peril of the hum to laughter nighest. 
     But prove they under stress of action’s fire
     Nobleness, to that test of Reason highest,
     She bows:  she waves them for the loftier lyre.

     Archduchess Anne

     1—­I

     In middle age an evil thing
     Befell Archduchess Anne: 
     She looked outside her wedding-ring
     Upon a princely man.

     II

     Count Louis was for horse and arms;
     And if its beacon waved,
     For love; but ladies had not charms
     To match a danger braved.

     III

     On battlefields he was the bow
     Bestrung to fly the shaft: 
     In idle hours his heart would flow
     As winds on currents waft.

     IV

     His blood was of those warrior tribes
     That streamed from morning’s fire,
     Whom now with traps and now with bribes
     The wily Council wire.

     V

     Archduchess Anne the Council ruled,
     Count Louis his great dame;
     And woe to both when one had cooled! 
     Little was she to blame.

     VI

     Among her chiefs who spun their plots,
     Old Kraken stood the sword: 
     As sharp his wits for cutting knots
     Of babble he abhorred.

     VII

     He reverenced her name and line,
     Nor other merit had
     Save soldierwise to wait her sign,
     And do the deed she bade.

     VIII

     He saw her hand jump at her side
     Ere royally she smiled
     On Louis and his fair young bride
     Where courtly ranks defiled.