«If you be, what I think you, some sweet dream,
I would but ask you to fulfil yourself:
But if you be that Ida whom I know,
I ask you nothing: only, if a dream,
Sweet dream, be perfect. I shall die to-night.
Stoop down and seem to kiss me ere I die.»
. . . . . . She turn'd; she paused;
She stoop'd; and with a great shock of the heart
Our mouths met: out of languor leapt a cry,
Crown'd Passion from the brinks of death, and up
Along the shuddering senses struck the soul,
And closed on fire with Ida's at the lips;
Till back I fell, and from mine arms she rose
Glowing all over noble shame; and all
Her falser self slipt from her like a robe,
And left her woman, lovelier in her mood
Than in her mould that other, when she come
From barren deeps to conquer all with love,
And down the streaming crystal dropt, and she
Far-fleeted by the purple island-sides,
Naked, a double light in air and wave....
She murmur'd «Vain, in vain: it cannot be.
He will not love me: how then? must I die?»
Then as a little helpless innocent bird,
That has but one plain passage of fine notes,
Will sing the simple passage o'er and o'er
For all an april morning, till the ear
Wearies to hear it, so the simple maid
Went half the night repeating, «must I die?»
At last she said «Sweet brothers, yester night
I seem'd a curious little maid again,
As happy as when we dwelt among the woods,
And when you used to take me with the flood
Up the great river in the boatman's boat.
Only you would not pass beyond the Cape
That has the poplar on it: there you fixt
Your limit, oft returning with the tide.
And yet I cried because you would not pass
Beyond it, and far up the shining flood
Until we found the palace of the king.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . Now shall I have my will.»
But when the next sun brake from underground,
Then, those two brethren slowly with bent brows
Accompanying, the sad chariot-bier
Past like a shadow thro' the field, that shone
Full-summer, to that stream whereon the barge,
Pall'd all its length in blackest samite, lay.
There sat the life-long creature of the house,
Loyal, the dumb old servitor, on deck,
Winking his eyes, and twisted all his face.
So those two brethren from the chariot took
And on the black decks laid her in her bed,
Set in her hand a lily, o'er her hung
The silken case with braided blazonings
And kiss'd her quiet brows, and saying to her:
«Sister, farewell for ever,» and again
«Farewell, sweet sister,» parted all in tears.
Then rose the dumb old servitor, and the dead
Steer'd by the dumb went upward with the flood—
In her right hand the lily, in her left
The letter—all her bright hair streaming down—
And all the coverlid was cloth of gold
Drawn to her waist, and she herself in white
All but her face, and that clear-featured face
Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead
But fast asleep, and lay as tho' she smiled.