Bridget! Unreal! Dead phantom of a form
Yet living, breathing—sneering, wreathed in olive scorn
Haunt not my seered soul pierced by thy secret sting;
Death to a pulsing throb, Life to a pulseless thing!
Now through the Gardens of Sleep, I see thy lovely mystic face
Pale ’gainst the scandent tendrils and resin-bleeding cones
Paler than ivory white, colder than bleachened bones,
Pallid and alburnous, fired for a lingering space
By eyes that never human in earthy regions saw.
Let me yet behold thee, far fairer than ere of yore!