Poet. 
So; I will tell thy glory now aright. 
I will not make it thy chief wonder, King,
That thou hast tied the world upon a rack;
Or that thy armies be so huge, the earth
Sways like a bridge of planks beneath their march,
And leagues about their way out of the ground
Like thunder comes the rumour of thy vengeance. 
These be but shows of kingship; but one thing
Exclaims, inevitably as a word
Announced by God, thee first of the world’s souls,—­
That thou mayst have in thy arms Vashti the Queen.—­
Princes, what looks are these? 
Why are your minds astonisht so unwisely? 
What, think you war the thing, or pompous fame? 
See if I speak not truth of love and woman. 
  You will have heard how lightning’s struck a man,
Shepherd or wayfarer, and when they found
The branded corpse, the rayment was torn off,
Blown into tatters and strewn wide by that
Withering death, and he birth-naked stretcht: 
Bethink you, is not that now very like
How woman smites your souls?  Whatever dress
Of thought you take to royalize your nature,—­
Gorgeous shawls of kingship, a world’s fear,
Or ample weavings of imagination,
Or the spun light of wisdom,—­like a gust
Of flame, that weather of impersonal thought
You strut beneath, that hanging storm of Love,
Strikes down a terrible swift dazzling finger,
Sight of some woman, on your clothed hearts,
And plucks the winding folly off, and leaves
Bare nature there.  And hear another likeness. 
Look, if the priests have made an altar-fire,
They can have any flame they list, as gums
Sprinkle the fluel, or salts, or curious earths,—­
Tawny or purple, green, scarlet, or blue,
Or moted with an upward rain of sparks;
But first there must be air, or else no fire: 
Man’s being is a fire lit unto God,
And many thoughts colour the sacred flame;
But the air for him, the draught wherein he glows,
The breathing spirit that has turned mere life
Into the hot vehement being of man
Lambent upon the altar of the world,
Is woman and desire of her, nought else. 
Behold, we know not what we do at all
When we love women:  is it we who love,
Or Destiny rather visiting our souls
In passion?—­How shall I name thee what thou art,
Woman, thou dream of man’s desire that God
Caught out of man’s first sleep and fashioned real? 
Deliverance art thou from his own strait thought,
Wind come from beyond the stars
To blow away like mist all the disgrace
Of reasonable bars,
The forgery of time and place,
Whereinto soul was narrowly brought
When it was gridded close behind
The workings of man’s mind. 
But Woman comes to bless
With an immoderateness,
With a divine excess,
Lust of life and yearn of flesh,
Till there seems naught hindering our souls: 
Else we should crawl along the years
Labour’d with measurable joys