The sixth canto is, perhaps, taken all in all, the finest in the poem. In it the full strength of the poet is put forth. The field of battle, the wounded knights, the old king’s haggard face stooping over the prostrate body of his son—all are themes for touching and pathetic pictures. How beautifully the poet traces in this canto the growth and final supremacy of the true womanly elements in Ida’s nature. The tender domestic instincts, first awakened by the care of Psyche’s child, are now quickened into new and stronger life by the presence of suffering and sorrow around her.
The seventh canto, which opens with one of the sweetest songs in the English language, “Ask Me No More,” shows the complete transfiguration of Ida’s nature under the influence of the affections. The college has been turned into an hospital, and the ministry of the heart in all its tenderness has taken the place of mere pride of intellect. Love has built its lily walls and transformed the cold hearth of solitude and selfishness into a radiant altar of self-sacrifice, devotion and love.
“Everywhere
Low voices with the ministering hand
Hung round the sick: the maidens came, they talk’d,
They sang, they read: till she not fair began
To gather light, and she that was, became
Her former beauty treble.”
Ida sits by the couch of the Prince, watching him in his delirium of fever. Her name is ever on his lips. Finally, in the still summer night, consciousness returns, and observing Ida at his bedside he murmurs:
“If you be, what I think you, some sweet dream,