which looks against
The morning, all the silver courage fails.—
How cam'st thou to the King?

1st Woman.
     Sold to him, I.

2nd Woman. Bought by him, I: for he had heard of me.

Vashti.
I also, sold or bought; nay, rather paid:
Paid like cash to him, that as servant king
My father might have life, and a throne in life.
It mattered nothing then. [The QUEEN pauses.
Often in early summer, as I walkt
A girl singing her happiness, beside
The high green corn, holding all earth my own,
I saw, as my feet and my voice past by,
How in its hiding some croucht little beast
Startled, and filled a space of the gentle corn
With plunging quivering fear. And always then
My heart answer'd the fear that shook the corn,
With a sudden doubt in its beating; for I knew
Within my life such rousing of dismay
I myself should watch, with seizing wonder.
It was so: in the midst of my new love,
That promist such a plenty in my soul,
At last some sleeping terror leapt awake,
And made the young growth shiver and wry about
Inwardly tormented. Yea, and my heart
It was, my heart in its hiding of green love,
That took so wildly the approaching sound
Of something strangely fearful walking near.

3rd Woman. A queer tale, this.

1st Woman.
     A spectre visited you?

Vashti. Indeed, a spectre.

1st Woman.
     That have I never seen.
Was it the kind with nose and mouth grown sharp
To an eagle's bill, and claws upon its fingers,
The curve of them pasted with a bloody glue?

Vashti. The spectre was—my beauty.

3rd Woman.
     It is as I said.
O Queen, send for a wise man in the morning;
And let him leech thy spirit.

4th Woman.
     I've heard, the best
Riddance for evil notions in the mind,
Is for a toad to sit upon the tongue;
While, breathed against the scalp, some power of spells
Loosens the clasp the notion hath digg'd deep
Into the soul; so that it passeth down,
Shaken and mastered, and creeps into the toad,—

3rd Woman. Which gives a foolish kick or start to feel it,—

4th Woman. Then the trapt notion may be easily burnt.

Vashti.
Yea?—I think mine would not burn easily.
With fire, with such indignant fire as pride
Yields, when it must destroy itself to feel
The power of the world touch it with humbling flame,—
With such a fire, whose heat you know not of,
Have I assayed this—notion, didst thou say?
And it stood upright, with its shape unquencht,
And lived within the fire.

3rd Woman.
     Thou hast it wrong.

4th Woman. Thou hast not understood the cure we meant.

2nd Woman. Stop brabbling, fools; I would hear the Queen's mind.

1st Woman.
I too; I hate a thing I cannot skill;
And thee and all that lives in thee, O Queen,
I would keep friendly to my spirit; yet
I do suspect something amazing in thee.

Vashti.
And if thou seest not how slippery
Is women's place in the world of men, 'tis like
Thou wilt amazedly the vision take,
When I have led thee up my tower of thought.

2nd Woman.
How are we dangerous? Are we not women,
Man's endless need?

Vashti.
     Ay, and therein the danger!
Is it not possible he hate the need?
For not as he were a beast it urges him:
He is aware of it, he knows its force,—
The kind of beasts is in their blood alone,
But man is blood and spirit. And in him,
As in all creature, is the word from God,
"Utter thyself in joy."

2nd Woman.
     And we his joy.

Vashti.
But such an one that may become, perhaps,
Something not utterance, but strict commanding,
Yea, mastery, like the dancing in the blood
Of one bitten by spiders. And it is Spirit,
Spirit enjoying woman, that hath sent
A beating poison in the blood of man,
The poison which is lust. Spirit was given
To use life as a sense for ecstasy;
Life mixt with Spirit must exult beyond
Sex-madden'd men and sex-serving women,
Into some rapture where sweet fleshly love
Is as the air wherein a music rings.
But blood hath captured Spirit; Spirit hath given
The strength of its desire of joy to make
What ecstasy it may of woman's beauty,
And of this only, doing no more than train
The joys of blood to be more keen and cunning;
As men have trained and tamed wild lives of the forests,
Breeding them to more excellent shape and size
And tireless speed, and to know the words of men.
So the wise masterful Spirit rules the joys
That come all fierce from roaming the dark blood;
They are broken to his desire, they are wily for him,
A pack of lusts wherewith the Spirit hunts
Pleasure; and the chief prey the pleasure hid
In woman.

1st Woman.
     What joys are these?

Vashti.
     What joys?
The joys of rutting beasts, tamed to endure,
Tamed to be always swift to answer Spirit,
Yet fiercer for their taming, wilder hungers;
So that the Spirit, if he hunt them not,
Fears to be torn by them in mutiny.
Now know you woman's beauty! 'Tis these joys,
The heat of the blood's desires, changed and mastered
By the desire of spirit, trained to serve
Spirit with lust, spirit with woman enjoy'd.

2nd Woman.
Queen, I am beautiful, and cannot boast
Thy subtle thinking; and to one like me,
What matters whence come beauty, so I have it?
Let it be but the witless mating of beasts,
Tamed and curiously knowing itself
And cunning in its own delight: What then?
The nightingale desires his little lass,
And that brings out of his heart a radiant song;
A man desires a woman, and for song
Out of his heart comes beauty, that like flame
Reaches towards her, and covers her limbs with light.
If it so please thee, say that neither loves
Aught but his life's desire, fashioning it
Adorably to marvellous song and beauty.
What then? Enough that the wonder lights on me,
To me is paid the worship of the wonder.

Vashti.
O well I know how strong we are in man;
His senses have our beauty for their god,
And his delight is built about us like
Towering adoration, housing worship.—
The spirit of man may dwell in God: the world,
From the soft delicate floor of grass to those
Rafters of light and hanging cloths of stars,
Is but the honour in God's mind for man,
Wrought into glorious imagination.
But women dwell in man; our temple is
The honour of man's sensual ecstasy,
Our safety the imagined sacredness
Fashion'd about us, fashion'd of his pleasure.
Beauty hath done this for us, and so made
Woman a kind within the kind of man.
Yea, there is more than this: a mighty need
Hath man made of his woman in the world.
Now man walks through his fate in fellowship
Of two companion spirits; ay, and these
With double mastery go on with him.
The