The Collected Works of William Morris :: :: University of Virginia Library

She turned her from the window presently,
And went unto her dainty bed once more;
But as she touched its silk a change came o'er
Her anxious heart, and listening there she stood,
Counting the eager throbbing of her blood;
But nought she heard except the night's dim noise;
Then did she whisper (and her faint, soft voice
Seemed hoarse and loud to her)—“Yet will I go
To Pallas' shrine, for fain I am to know
If all things even yet may go aright,
For my heart fails me.”

To the blind dusk night
She showed her loveliness awhile half-veiled,
After her words, as though her purpose failed;
Then softly did she turn and take to her

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A dusky cloak, and hid her beauty rare
In its dark folds, and turned unto the door;
But ere she passed its marble threshold o'er
Stayed pondering, and thus said:

“Alas, alas!
To-morrow must I say that all this was
And is not—this sweet longing?—what say men—
It cometh once and cometh not again,
This first love for another? holds the earth
Within its circle aught that is of worth
When it is dead?—and this is part of it,
This measureless sweet longing that doth flit,
Never to come again, when all is won.
And is our first desire so soon foredone,
Like to the rose-bud, that through day and night
In early summer strives to meet the light,
And in some noon-tide of the June, bursts sheath,
And ere the eve is passed away in death?
Belike love dies then like the rest of life?
—Or falls asleep until it mix with strife
And fear and grief?—and then we call it pain,
And curse it for its labour lost in vain.

“Sweet pain! be kind to me and leave me not!
Leave me not cold, with all my grief forgot,
And all the joy consumed I thought should fill
My changing troubled days of life, until
Death turned all measuring of the days to nought!

“And thou, O death, when thou my life hast caught
Within thy net, what wilt thou with my love,
That now I deem no lapse of time can move?
O death, maybe that though I seem to pass
And come to nought, with all that once I was,
Yet love shall live which once was part of me,
And hold me in his heart despite of thee,
And call me part of him, when I am dead
As the world talks of dying.”

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So she said,
But scarcely heard her voice, and through the door
Of her own chamber passed; light on the floor
Her white feet fell, her soft clothes rustled nought,
As slowly, wrapped in many a changing thought,
Unto the Maiden's shrine she took her way
That midmost of the palace precincts lay;
But in a chamber that was hard thereby,
Although she knew it not, that night did lie
Her love that was, her lord that was to be.