Sebald.You would always laugh
At my wet boots: I had to stride through grass
Over my ankles.
Ottima.Then our crowning night!
Sebald. The July night?
Ottima.The day of it too, Sebald!
When heaven's pillars seemed o'erbowed with heat,185
Its black-blue canopy suffered descend
Close on us both, to weigh down each to each,
And smother up all life except our life.
So lay we till the storm came.
Sebald.How it came!
Ottima. Buried in woods we lay, you recollect;190
Swift ran the searching tempest overhead;
And ever and anon some bright white shaft
Burned through the pine-tree roof, here burned and there,
As if God's messenger through the close wood screen
Plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture,195
Feeling for guilty thee and me; then broke
The thunder like a whole sea overhead—
Sebald.Slower, Ottima!
Do not lean on me!
Ottima.Sebald, as we lay,
Who said, "Let death come now! 'Tis right to die!
Right to be punished! Naught completes such bliss200
But woe!" Who said that?
Sebald.How did we ever rise?
Was't that we slept? Why did it end?