"It comforts me in this one thought to dwell,

That I subdued me to my father's will;

Because the kiss he gave me, ere I fell,

Sweetens the spirit still.

"Moreover it is written that my race

Hew'd Ammon, hip and thigh, from Aroer

On Arnon unto Minneth."

Here her face

Glow'd, as I look'd at her.

She lock'd her lips: she left me where I stood: "Glory to God," she sang, and past afar, Thridding the sombre boskage of the wood,

Toward the morning-star.

Losing her carol I stood pensively,

As one that from a casement leans his head, When midnight bells cease ringing suddenly,

And the old year is dead.

"Alas! alas!" a low voice, full of care,

Murmur'd beside me: "Turn and look on me :

I am that Rosamond, whom men call fair,

If what I was I be.

"Would I had been some maiden coarse and poor! O me, that I should ever see the light! Those dragon eyes of anger'd Eleanor

Do hunt me, day and night."

She ceased in tears, fallen from hope and trust:
To whom the Egyptian: "O, you tamely died!
You should have clung to Fulvia's waist, and thrust
The dagger thro' her side."

With that sharp sound the white dawn's creeping beams,

Stol'n to my brain, dissolved the mystery

Of folded sleep. The captain of my dreams

Ruled in the eastern sky.

Morn broaden'd on the borders of the dark,

Ere I saw her, who clasp'd in her last trance Her murder'd father's head, or Joan of Arc, A light of ancient France;

Or her, who knew that Love can vanquish Death, Who kneeling, with one arm about her king, Drew forth the poison with her balmy breath, Sweet as new buds in Spring.

No memory labours longer from the deep

Gold-mines of thought to lift the hidden ore

That glimpses, moving up, than I from sleep

To gather and tell o'er

Each little sound and sight. With what dull pain

Compass'd, how eagerly I sought to strike

Into that wondrous track of dreams again!

But no two dreams are like.

As when a soul laments, which hath been blest, Desiring what is mingled with past years,

In yearnings that can never be exprest

By signs or groans or tears;

Because all words, tho' cull'd with choicest art,

Failing to give the bitter of the sweet,

Wither beneath the palate, and the heart

Faints, faded by its heat.

O rare pale Margaret,

What lit your eyes with tearful power,

Like moonlight on a falling shower?

Who lent you, love, your mortal dower
Of pensive thought and aspect pale,

Your melancholy sweet and frail
As perfume of the cuckoo-flower?
From the westward-winding flood