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The works of Lord Byron

A new, revised and enlarged edition, with illustrations. Edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge and R. E. Prothero

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XXI.

He gazed, as if not yet had passed away
The haughty spirit of that humbed clay;

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And those around have roused him from his trance,
But cannot tear from thence his fixéd glance;
And when, in raising him from where he bore
Within his arms the form that felt no more,
He saw the head his breast would still sustain,
Roll down like earth to earth upon the plain;
He did not dash himself thereby, nor tear
The glossy tendrils of his raven hair,
But strove to stand and gaze, but reeled and fell,
Scarce breathing more than that he loved so well.
Than that he loved! Oh! never yet beneath
The breast of man such trusty love may breathe!
That trying moment hath at once revealed
The secret long and yet but half concealed;
In baring to revive that lifeless breast,
Its grief seemed ended, but the sex confessed;
And life returned, and Kaled felt no shame—
What now to her was Womanhood or Fame?