 | The poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich |  |
ACT V
[Midnight]
First, two white arms that held him very close,And ever closer as he drew him back
Reluctantly, the unbound golden hair
A thousand delicate fibres reaching out
Still to detain him; then some twenty steps
Of iron staircase winding round and down,
And ending in a narrow gallery hung
With Gobelin tapestries—Andromeda
Rescued by Perseus, and the sleek Diana
With her nymphs bathing; at the farther end
A door that gave upon a starlit grove
Of citron and dwarf cypress; then a path
As bleached as moonlight, with the shadow of leaves
358
Of solid masonry; and last of all
A Gothic archway packed with night, and then—
A sudden gleaming dagger through his heart.
| The poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich | |