'He loved but only thee!
That love is transient too. The wild hawk's bill doth dabble still I' the mouth that vowed thee true. Will he open his dull eyes,
When tears fall on his brow? Behold, the death-worm to his heart Is a nearer thing than thou,
Her face was on the ground
None saw the agony.
But the men at sea did that night agree They heard a drowning cry.
And when the morning brake, Fast rolled the river's tide,
With the green trees waving overhead, And a white corse laid beside.
A knight's bloodhound and he
The funeral watch did keep;
With a thought o' the chase he stroked its face
As it howled to see him weep.
A fair child kissed the dead,
But shrank before its cold.
And alone yet proudly in his hall Did stand a baron old.
Margret, Margret.
Hang up my harp again!
I have no voice for song.
Not song but wail, and mourners pale Not bards, to love belong. O failing human love!
O light, by darkness known! O false, the while thou treadest earth! O deaf beneath the stone!
To rest the weary nurse has gone.
An eight-day watch had watchèd she,
Still rocking beneath sun and moon
The baby on her knee,
Till Isobel its mother said
'The fever waneth-wend to bed,
For now the watch comes round to me.'
Then wearily the nurse did throw Her pallet in the darkest place
Of that sick room, and slept and dreamed. For, as the gusty wind did blow
The night-lamp's flare across her face, She saw, or seemed to see, but dreamed, That the poplars tall on the opposite hill, The seven tall poplars on the hill, Did clasp the setting sun until
His rays dropped from him, pined and still
Till he waned and paled, so weirdly crossed, To the colour of moonlight which doth pass Over the dank ridged churchyard grass.
The poplars held the sun, and he The eyes of the nurse that they should not see Not for a moment, the babe on her knee, Though she shuddered to feel that it grew to be Too chill, and lay too heavily.
She only dreamed; for all the while 'Twas Lady Isobel that kept The little baby, and it slept Fast, warm, as if its mother's smile, Laden with love's dewy weight, And red as rose of Harpocrate Dropt upon its eyelids, pressed Lashes to cheek in a sealèd rest.
And more, and more smiled Isobel To see the baby sleep so well- She knew not that she smiled. Against the lattice, dull and wild
Drive the heavy droning drops, Drop by drop, the sound being one- As momently time's segments fall On the ear of God, who hears through all Eternity's unbroken monotone. And more and more smiled Isobel To see the baby sleep so well- She knew not that she smiled. The wind in intermission stops Down in the beechen forest, Then cries aloud
As one at the sorest, Self-stung, self-driven, And rises up to its very tops, Stiffening erect the branches bowed, Dilating with a tempest-soul The trees that with their dark hands break
Through their own outline and heavily roll Shadows as massive as clouds in heaven, Across the castle lake.
And more and more smiled Isobel To see the baby sleep so well; She knew not that she smiled; She knew not that the storm was wild. Through the uproar drear she could not hear The castle clock which struck anear- She heard the low, light breathing of her child.
O sight for wondering look! While the external nature broke Into such abandonment, While the very mist heart-rent By the lightning, seemed to eddy
Against nature, with a din, A sense of silence and of steady Natural calm appeared to come From things without, and enter in The human creature's room.
So motionless she sate,
The babe asleep upon her knees,
You might have dreamed their souls had gone Away to things inanimate,
In such to live, in such to moan; And that their bodies had ta'en back, In mystic change, all silences That cross the sky in cloudy rack, Or dwell beneath the reedy ground In waters safe from their own sound.
The deepening smile I named before, And that a deepening love expressed; And who at once can love and rest?
In sooth the smile that then was keeping Watch upon the baby sleeping, Floated with its tender light Downward, from the drooping eyes Upward, from the lips apart, Over cheeks which had grown white
With an eight-day weeping. All smiles come in such a wise, Where tears shall fall or have of old- Like northern lights that fill the heart Of heaven in sign of cold.
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