Explore "The Princess" by Alfred Tennyson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Morn in the wake of the morning star / Came furrowing all the orient into gold. / We rose, and each by other drest with care / Descended to the court that lay three parts / In shadow, but the Muses' heads were touched / Above the darkness from their native East.
There while we stood beside the fount, and watched / Or seemed to watch the dancing bubble, approached / Melissa, tinged with wan from lack of sleep, / Or grief, and glowing round her dewy eyes / The circled Iris of a night of tears; / 'And fly,' she cried, 'O fly, while yet you may! / My mother knows:' and when I asked her 'how,' / 'My fault' she wept 'my fault! and yet not mine; / Yet mine in part. O hear me, pardon me. / My mother, 'tis her wont from night to night / To rail at Lady Psyche and her side. / She says the Princess should have been the Head, / Herself and Lady Psyche the two arms; / And so it was agreed when first they came; / But Lady Psyche was the right hand now, / And the left, or not, or seldom used; / Hers more than half the students, all the love. / And so last night she fell to canvass you: / " Her" countrywomen! she did not envy her. / "Who ever saw such wild barbarians? / Girls?