And then did something speak to me—I know not what was said;
For great delight and shuddering took hold of all my mind,
And up the valley came again the music on the wind.
But you were sleeping; and I said, ‘It’s not for them: it’s mine.’
And if it comes three times, I thought, I take it for a sign.
And once again it came, and close beside the window-bars,
Then seem’d to go right up to Heaven and die among the stars.’
‘This blessed music,’ she says, ‘went that way my soul will have to go.’ She is reconciled to her inevitable fate; yet still she casts a ‘longing, lingering look behind,’ to the beautiful world she is leaving forever. Her reflections are imbued with a deep pathos; the second line of the first stanza, especially, ‘teems with sensation:’
‘O look! the sun begins to rise, the heavens are in a glow;
He shines upon a hundred fields, and all of them I know: