But in dark corners of her palace stood Uncertain shapes; and unawares On white-eyed phantasms weeping tears of blood, And horrible nightmares, And hollow shades enclosing hearts of flame, On corpses three-months-old at noon she came, That stood against the wall. A spot of dull stagnation, without light Or power of movement, seem'd my soul, 'Mid onward-sloping motions infinite Making for one sure goal. A still salt pool, lock'd in with bars of sand; The plunging seas draw backward from the land Their moon-led waters white. A star that with the choral starry dance Back on herself her serpent pride had curl'd. 66 No voice," she shriek'd in that lone hall, "No voice breaks thro' the stillness of this world: One deep, deep silence all!" She, mouldering with the dull earth's mouldering sod, Inwrapt tenfold in slothful shame, Lay there exiled from eternal God, And death and life she hated equally, No comfort anywhere; Remaining utterly confused with fears, And ever worse with growing time, And ever unrelieved by dismal tears, Shut up as in a crumbling tomb, girt round Far off she seem'd to hear the dully sound Of human footsteps fall. As in strange lands a traveller walking slow, A little before moon-rise hears the low Moan of an unknown sea; And knows not if it be thunder or a sound Of great wild beasts; then thinketh, “I have found She howl'd aloud, "I am on fire within. So when four years were wholly finished, "Yet pull not down my palace towers, that are So lightly, beautifully built : Perchance I may return with others there When I have purged my guilt." LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE. LADY Clara Vere de Vere, Of me you shall not win renown; Lady Clara Vere de Vere, I know you proud to bear your name, Your pride is yet no mate for mine, Too proud to care from whence I came. |