Narded, and swathed and balm'd it for herself,
And laid it in a new-hewn sepulchre,
Where man had never lain. I was led mute
Into her temple like a sacrifice;
I was the high-priest in her holiest place,
Not to be loudly broken in upon.
Oh! friend, thoughts deep and heavy as these well-nigh
O'erbore the limits of my brain; but he
Bent o'er me, and my neck his arm upstay'd
From earth. I thought it was an adder's fold,
And once I strove to disengage myself,
But fail'd, I was so feeble. She was there too:
She bent above me too: her cheek was pale,
Oh! very fair and pale: rare pity had stolen
The living bloom away, as tho' a red rose
Should change into a white one suddenly.
Her eyes, I saw, were full of tears in the morn,
And some few drops of that distressful rain
Being wafted on the wind, drove in my sight,
And being there they did break forth afresh
In a new birth, immingled with my own,
And still bewept my grief. Keeping unchanged
The purport of their coinage. Her long ringlets,
Drooping and beaten with the plaining wind,
Did brush my forehead in their to-and-fro:
For in the sudden anguish of her heart
Loosed from their simple thrall they had flowed abroad,
And onward floating in a full, dark wave,
Parted on either side her argent neck,
Mantling her form half way. She, when I woke,