id="id00228">  Not with envy love they more
  Locks and pinions purple-tinted,
  Nor with jealousy adore
  Those whose pleasures are unstinted,
  And whose purple hair and wings
  Give them place with queens and kings.

  When a purple glendoveer
  Flits along the mute expanses,
  They surround him, far and near,
  With their glancing wings and dances,
  And do honor to the hue
  Loved by all and worn by few.

  In the days long gone, alas!
  Two upon a cloud, low-seated,
  Saw their pinions in the glass
  Of a silver lake repeated.
  One was blue and one was red,
  And the lovely pair were wed.

  "Purple wings are very fine,"
  Spoke the voice of Ruby, gently:
  "Ay" said Sapphire, "they're divine!"—
  Looking at his blue intently.
  "But we're blest," said Ruby, then,
  "And we'll not complain like men."

  Sapphire stretched his loving arms,
  And she nestled on his bosom,
  While his heart inhaled her charms
  As the sense inhales a blossom;—
  Drank her wholly, tint and tone,
  Blent her being with his own.

  Rapture passed, they raised their eyes,
  But were startled into clamor
  Of a marvellous surprise!
  Was it color! was it glamour!
  Purple-tinted, sweet and warm,
  Was each wing and folded form!

  Who had wrought it—how it came—
  These were what the twain disputed.
  How were mingled smoke and flame
  Into royal hue transmuted?
  Each was right, the other wrong:
  But their quarrel was not long,

  For the moment that their speech
  Differed o'er their little story,
  Swiftly faded off from each
  Every trace of purple glory,
  Blue was bluer than before,
  And the red was red once more.

  Then they knew that both were wrong,
  And in sympathy of sorrow
  Learned that each was only strong
  In the power to lend and borrow,—
  That the purple never grew
  But by grace of red to blue.

  So, embracing in content,
  Hearts and wings again united,
  Red and blue in purple blent,
  And their holy troth replighted,
  Both, as happy as the day,
  Kissed, and rose, and flew away!

  And for twice a thousand years,
  Floating through the radiant ether,
  Lived the happy glendoveers,
  Of the other, jealous neither,—
  Sapphire naught without the red,
  Ruby still by blue bested.

  But when weary of their life,
  They came down to earth at even—
  Purple husband, purple wife—
  From the upper deeps of heaven,
  And reclined upon the grass,
  That their little lives might pass.

  Wing to wing and arms enwreathed,
  Sank they from their life's long dreaming;—
  Into earth their souls they breathed;
  But when morning's light was streaming,
  All their joys and sweet regrets
  Bloomed in banks of violets!

  As from its dimpled fountain, at its own capricious will,
  Each step a note of music, and each fall and flash a thrill,
  The rill goes singing to the meadow levels and is still,

  So fell from Nourmahal her song upon the captive sense;
  It dashed in spray against the throne, it tinkled through the tents,
  And died at last among the flowery banks of recompense;

  For when great Selim marked her fire, and read her riddle well,
  And watched her from the flushing to the fading of the spell,
  He sprang forgetful, from his seat, and caught her as she fell.

  He raised her in his tender arms; he bore her to his throne:
  "No more, oh! Nourmahal, my wife, no more I sit alone;
  And the future for the dreary past shall royally atone!"

  He called to him the princes and the nobles of the land,
  Then took the signet-ring from his, and placed it on her hand,
  And bade them honor as his own, fair Nourmahal's command.

  And on the minted silver that his largess scattered wide,
  And on the gold of commerce, till the mighty Selim died,
  Her name and his in shining boss stood equal, side by side.

XXII.

  The opening of the wondrous tome
  Was like the opening of a door
  Into a vast and pictured dome,
  Crowded, from vaulted roof to floor,
  With secrets of her life and home.

  To be like Philip was to be
  Another Philip—only less!
  To win his wit in full degree
  Would bear to him but nothingness,
  From one no wiser grown than he!

  If blue and red in Hindostan
  Were blue and red at home, she knew
  That she—a woman, he—a man,
  Could never wear the royal hue
  Till blue and red together ran

  In complement of each to each;
  She might not tint his life at all
  By learning wisdom he could teach;
  So what she gave, though poor and small,
  Should be of that beyond his reach.

  Where Philip fed, she would not feed;
  Where Philip walked, she would not go;
  The books he read she would not read,
  But live her separate life, and, so,
  Have sole supplies to meet his need.

  He held his mission and his range;
  His way and work were all his own;
  And she would give him in exchange
  What she could win and she alone,
  Of life and learning, fresh and strange.

XXIII.

  While thus she sat in musing mood,
  Determining her life's emprise,
  The sunlight flushed the distant wood,
  Then, coming closer, filled her eyes,
  And glorified her solitude.

  The clouds were shivered by the lance
  Sped downward by the morning sun,
  And from her heart, in swift advance,
  The shadows vanished, one by one,
  Till more than sunlight filled the manse.

  She closed the volume with a gust
  That sprent the light with powdered gold;
  Then placed it high to hide and rust
  Where, curious and over-bold
  She found it, lying in its dust.

  Her soul was light, her path was plain;
  One shadow only drooped above,—
  The shadow of a heart and brain
  So charged with overwhelming love
  That it oppressed and gave her pain.

  The modest comb that kept her hair;
  To Philip was a golden crown;
  And every ringlet was a snare,
  And every hat, and every gown
  And slipper, something more than fair.

  His love had glorified her grace,
  And she was his, and not her own,—
  So wholly his she had no place
  Beside him on his lonely throne,
  Or share in love's divine embrace.

  And knowing that the coming days
  Would strip her features of their mask,
  That duty then would speak her praise,
  And love become a loyal task,
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