She sees him vanish into night--
She starts from sleep in deep affright,
For it was not her own true knight.

Though but in dream Gunhilda failed--
Though but a fancied ill assailed--
Though she but fancied fault bewailed--

Yet thought of day makes dream of night;
She is not worthy of the knight;
The inmost altar burns not bright.

If loneliness thou canst not bear--
Cannot the dragon's venom dare--
Of the pure meed thou shouldst despair.

Now sadder that lone maiden sighs;
Far bitterer tears profane her eyes;
Crushed in the dust her heart's flower lies.'

"To show the evident carelessness with which this poem was
constructed, I have italicized an identical rhyme (of about the same
force in versification as an identical proposition in logic) and two
grammatical improprieties. _To lean_ is a neuter verb, and 'seizing
_on_' is not properly to be called a pleonasm, merely because it
is--nothing at all. The concluding line is difficult of pronunciation
through excess of consonants. I should have preferred, indeed, the
ante-penultimate tristich as the _finale_ of the poem.

"The supposition that the book of an author is a thing apart from the