VIOLET.
Alas! if Love rose never from the dead.
WALTER.
Between him and the Lady of his Love
There stood a wrinkled worldling ripe for hell.
When with his golden hand he plucked that flower,
And would have smelt it, lo! it paled and shrank,
And withered in his grasp. And when she died,
The rivers of his heart ran all to waste;
They found no ocean, dry sands sucked them up.
Lady! he was a fool—a pitiful fool.
She said she loved him, would be dead in spring—
She asked him but to stand beside her grave—
She said she would be daisies—and she thought
'Twould give her joy to feel that he was near.
She died like music; and, would you believe 't?
He kept her foolish words within his heart
As ceremonious as a chapel keeps
A relic of a saint. And in the spring
The doting idiot went!
VIOLET.
What found he there?
WALTER.
Laugh till your sides ache! Oh, he went, poor fool!
But he found nothing save red-trampled clay,
And a dull sobbing rain. Do you not laugh?
Amid the comfortless rain he stood and wept,
Bare-headed, in the mocking, pelting rain.
He might have known 'twas ever so on earth.
VIOLET.