"That the essential meaning growing may exceed the special symbol,
Is the thought as I conceive it: it applies more high and low.
Our true noblemen will often through right nobleness grow humble,
And assert an inward honour by denying outward show."
XXXII.
"Nay, your Silence," said I, "truly, holds her symbol-rose but slackly,
Yet she holds it, or would scarcely be a Silence to our ken:
And your nobles wear their ermine on the outside, or walk blackly
In the presence of the social law as mere ignoble men.
XXXIII.
"Let the poets dream such dreaming! madam, in these British islands
'T is the substance that wanes ever, 't is the symbol that exceeds.
Soon we shall have nought but symbol: and, for statues like this Silence,
Shall accept the rose's image—in another case, the weed's."
XXXIV.
"Not so quickly," she retorted,—"I confess, where'er you go, you
Find for things, names—shows for actions, and pure gold for honour clear:
But when all is run to symbol in the Social, I will throw you
The world's book which now reads dryly, and sit down with Silence here."
XXXV.
Half in playfulness she spoke, I thought, and half in indignation;
Friends, who listened, laughed her words off, while her lovers deemed her fair:
A fair woman, flushed with feeling, in her noble-lighted station
Near the statue's white reposing—and both bathed in sunny air!
XXXVI.