WALTER.
Poor child, poor child!
We sat in dreadful silence with our sin,
Looking each other wildly in the eyes:
Methought I heard the gates of heaven close,
She flung herself against me, burst in tears,
As a wave bursts in spray. She covered me
With her wild sorrow, as an April cloud
With dim dishevelled tresses hides the hill
On which its heart is breaking. She clung to me
With piteous arms, and shook me with her sobs,
For she had lost her world, her heaven, her God,
And now had nought but me and her great wrong.
She did not kill me with a single word,
But once she lifted her tear-dabbled face—
Had hell gaped at my feet I would have leapt
Into its burning throat, from that pale look.
Still it pursues me like a haunting fiend:
It drives me out to the black moors at night,
Where I am smitten by the hissing rain,
And ruffian winds, dislodging from their troops,
Hustle me shrieking, then with sudden turn
Go laughing to their fellows. Merciful God!
It comes—that face again, that white, white face,
Set in a night of hair; reproachful eyes,
That make me mad. Oh, save me from those eyes!
They will torment me even in the grave,
And burn on me in Tophet.
GIRL.
Where are you going?
WALTER.
My heart's on fire by hell, and on I drive
To outer blackness, like a blazing ship.
[He rushes away.
SCENE XI.
Night.—Walter, standing alone in his garden.