My wakeful watches for her holy sake,
And vision’d vigils under sleepless stars
Against the world. I conquer’d—yet she died.
The goings of my life are barr’d by this,
And this pale body at my threshold lies
For ever; therefore I must close the door
And end. Would it be too much sacrilege,
Once ere I die, to open this white throat
And kiss it where the shapely column springs?
Or these dead hands? Or this death-smoothèd brow,