Of these sad tears, and feeds their downward flow.
So Love, arraign'd to judgment and to death,
Received unto himself a part of blame.
Being guiltless, as an innocent prisoner,
Who when the woful sentence hath been past,
And all the clearness of his fame hath gone
Beneath the shadow of the curse of men,
First falls asleep in swoon. Wherefrom awaked
And looking round upon his tearful friends,
Forthwith and in his agony conceives
A shameful sense as of a cleaving crime--
For whence without some guilt should such grief be?
So died that hour, and fell into the abysm
Of forms outworn, but not to be outworn,
Who never hail'd another worth the Life
That made it sensible. So died that hour,
Like odour wrapt into the winged wind
Borne into alien lands and far away.
There be some hearts so airy-fashioned,
That in the death of love, if e'er they loved,
On that sharp ridge of utmost doom ride highly
Above the perilous seas of change and chance;
Nay, more, holds out the lights of cheerfulness;
As the tall ship, that many a dreary year
Knit to some dismal sandbank far at sea,
All through the lifelong hours of utter dark,
Showers slanting light upon the dolorous wave.
For me all other Hopes did sway from that
Which hung the frailest: falling, they fell too,
Crush'd link on link into the beaten earth,