The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,..."
The evening star made me dream of immortality and love—my love for Fanny Brawne....
Now we, Severn and I, were journeying across the country to Rome ... voyaging, rather, through fields of flowers ... like my procession of Bacchus in Endymion ... that was a big poem, after all....
Now the fountain played under the window ... where I was to die....
"Severn, I feel the daisies growing over me."
"Severn, I—I—Severn ... I am dying ... Severn, lift me up—I—"
"Here lies one whose fame was writ in water." (How they cruelly laughed at that—for a time!)
I gave a start, almost a scream of agony ... the candle, somehow, had served me a ghastly trick ... it had cast my shadow backward on the wall, like that shadow cast by the head of the dying poet, as Severn had sketched it.... I ran my hand over my face ... it was hollow and tight-drawn like the face of a consumptive.