Fair shines the gilded aureole In which our highest painters place Some living woman's simple face. And the stilled features thus descried As Jenny's long throat droops aside, The shadows where the cheeks are thin, And pure wide curve from ear to chin, With Raffael's, Leonardo's hand To show them to men's souls, might stand, Whole ages long, the whole world through, For preachings of what God can do. What has man done here? How atone, Great God, for this which man has done? And for the body and soul which by Man's pitiless doom must now comply With lifelong hell, what lullaby Of sweet forgetful second birth Remains? All dark. No sign on earth What measure of God's rest endows The many mansions of his house. 220 230 240 You'd not believe by what strange roads ... 300 Why, there's the dawn! And there's an early wagon drawn To market, and some sheep that jog Bleating before a barking dog; And the old streets come peering through Another night that London knew; And all as ghostlike as the lamps. So on the wings of day decamps Your lamp, my Jenny, kept alight, Glimmers with dawn your empty bed; 310 “And lonely her bridegroom's soul hath flown, Little brother." (O Mother, Mary Mother, The lonely ghost, between Hell and Heaven!) 273 "Oh the wind is sad in the iron chill, Sister Helen, And weary sad they look by the hill." "But he and I are sadder still, Little brother!" (O Mother, Mary Mother, Most sad of all, between Hell and Heaven 1) "See, see, the wax has dropped from its place, Sister Helen, And the flames are winning up apace!" "Yet here they burn but for a space, Little brother!" 280 264 Little brother!" (O Mother, Mary Mother, The naked soul, between Hell and Heaven!) "Flank to flank are the three steeds gone, Sister Helen, But the lady's dark steed goes alone." Who willed that Buridan should steer White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies, And Ermengarde the lady of Maine, |