Must I pronounce your doom?
Consign you to the tomb?
“Alas! my Yang Kuei-fei,
I’m powerless to save!
My life—throne—empire—all I’d give
Had I the power to bid you live—
To snatch you from the grave.
Yet they have willed it thus—and I
Who’d die to save you, bid you die.”
“See I am calm,—it is not death I fear,