Said: "And didst love me as thy lips would prove,
No visions wrought of sleep might move thy love.
Firm is all love in firmness of his power;
With flame, reverberant, moated stands his tower;
So built as not to admit from fact a beam
Of doubt, and much less of a doubt from dream:
All such th' alchemic fire of love's desires,—
That moats its tower with flame,—turns to gold wires
To chord the old lyre new whereon he lyres."
She ceased; and then, sad softness in her eye,