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Why should it look like Maud?
Am I to be overawed

By what I cannot but know
Is a juggle born of the brain?

Back from the Breton coast, Sick of a nameless fear, Back to the dark sea-line

Looking, thinking of all I have lost;
An old song vexes my ear,
But that of Lamech is mine.

For years, a measureless ill,
For years, for ever, to part-
But she, she would love me still;
And as long, O God, as she
Have a grain of love for me,
So long, no doubt, no doubt,
Shall I nurse in my dark heart,
However weary, a spark of will
Not to be trampled out.

Strange, that the mind, when fraught
With a passion so intense
One would think that it well
Might drown all life in the eye,-
That it should, by being so overwrought,
Suddenly strike on a sharper sense
For a shell, or a flower, little things
Which else would have been past by!
And now I remember, I,
When he lay dying there,

I noticed one of his many rings-
For he had many, poor worm
thought,

It is his mother's hair.

Who knows if he be dead?

Whether I need have fled?

Am I guilty of blood?

However this may be,

- and

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When I was wont to meet her
In the silent woody places

By the home that gave me birth,
We stood tranced in long embraces
Mixed with kisses sweeter, sweeter
Than anything on earth.

A shadow flits before me,
Not thou, but like to thee.
Ah, Christ, that it were possible
For one short hour to see

The souls we loved, that they might tell

us

What and where they be!

It leads me forth at evening,
It lightly winds and steals
In a cold white robe before me,
When all my spirit reels

At the shouts, the leagues of lights,
And the roaring of the wheels.

Half the night I waste in sighs,
Half in dreams I sorrow after
The delight of early skies;
In a wakeful doze I sorrow
For the hand, the lips, the eyes,
For the meeting of the morrow,
The delight of happy laughter,
The delight of low replies.

'T is a morning pure and sweet,
And a dewy splendor falls
On the little flower that clings
To the turrets and the walls;
"T is a morning pure and sweet,
And the light and shadow fleet.

She is walking in the meadow, And the woodland echo rings; In a moment we shall meet. She is singing in the meadow, And the rivulet at her feet Ripples on in light and shadow To the ballad that she sings.

Do I hear her sing as of old,

My bird with the shining head,
My own dove with the tender eye?

But there rings on a sudden a passionate

cry,

There is some one dying or dead,

And a sullen thunder is roll'd;

For a tumult shakes the city,
And I wake, my dream is fled.
In the shuddering dawn, behold,
Without knowledge, without pity,
By the curtains of my bed
That abiding phantom cold!

Get thee hence, nor come again,
Mix not memory with doubt,
Pass, thou deathlike type of pain,
Pass and cease to move about!
"T is the blot upon the brain
That will show itself without.

Then I rise, the eave-drops fall, And the yellow vapors choke The great city sounding wide; The day comes, a dull red ball Wrapt in drifts of lurid smoke On the misty river-tide.

Thro' the hubbub of the market
I steal, a wasted frame;

It crosses here, it crosses there,

Thro' all that crowd confused and loud,

The shadow still the same;

And on my heavy eyelids

My anguish hangs like shame.

Alas for her that met me,
That heard me softly call,

Came glimmering thro' the laurels
At the quiet evenfall,

In the garden by the turrets
Of the old manorial hall!

Would the happy spirit descend
From the realms of light and song,
In the chamber or the street,
As she looks among the blest,
Should I fear to greet my friend
Or to say 66
Forgive the wrong,"
Or to ask her, Take me, sweet,
To the regions of thy rest"?

But the broad light glares and beats,
And the shadow flits and fleets
And will not let me be;

And I loathe the squares and streets,
And the faces that one meets,
Hearts with no love for me.

Always I long to creep

Into some still cavern deep,
There to weep, and weep, and weep
My whole soul out to thee.

WILL

1855.

O, WELL for him whose will is strong! He suffers, but he will not suffer long; He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong. For him nor moves the loud world's random mock,

Nor all Calamity's hugest waves confound,

Who seems a promontory of rock,

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Scorn was allow'd as part of his defect, And he was answer'd softly by the King And all his Table. So Sir Lancelot holp To raise the prince, who rising twice or thrice

Full sharply smote his knees, and smiled, and went;

But, ever after, the small violence done
Rankled in him and ruffled all his heart,
As the sharp wind that ruffles all day
long

A little bitter pool about a stone
On the bare coast.

But when Sir Lancelot told This matter to the Queen, at first she

laugh'd

Lightly, to think of Modred's dusty fall, Then shudder'd, as the village wife who cries,

"I shudder, some one steps across my grave:

Then laugh'd again, but faintlier, for indeed

She half-foresaw that he, the subtle beast, Would track her guilt until he found,

and hers

Would be for evermore a name of scorn. Henceforward rarely could she front in hall,

Or elsewhere, Modred's narrow foxy face, Heart-hiding smile, and gray persistent

eye.

Henceforward too, the Powers that tend the soul,

To help it from the death that cannot die,

And save it even in extremes, began To vex and plague her. Many a time for hours,

Beside the placid breathings of the King, In the dead night, grim faces came and went

Before her, or a vague spiritual fear-Like to some doubtful noise of creaking doors,

Heard by the watcher in a haunted house,

That keeps the rust of murder on the walls-

Held her awake; or if she slept she dream'd

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An awful dream, for then she seem'd to On some vast plain before a setting sun, And from the sun there swiftly made at her

A ghastly something, and its shadow flew Before it till it touch'd her, and she turn'd

When lo! her own, that broadening from her feet,

And blackening, swallow'd all the land, and in it

Far cities burnt, and with a cry she woke.

And all this trouble did not pass but

grew,

Till even the clear face of the guileless King,

And trustful courtesies of household life, Became her bane; and at the last she said:

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O Lancelot, get thee hence to thine own land,

For if thou tarry we shall meet again, And if we meet again some evil chance Will make the smouldering scandal break and blaze

Before the people and our lord the King." And Lancelot ever promised, but remain'd

And still they met and met. Again she said,

"O Lancelot, if thou love me get thee hence."

And then they were agreed upon a night

When the good King should not be there -to meet

And part for ever. Vivien, lurking, heard.

She told Sir Modred. Passion-pale they met

And greeted. Hands in hands, and eye to eye,

Low on the border of her couch they sat Stammering and staring. It was their last hour,

A madness of farewells. And Modred brought

His creatures to the basement of the tower

For testimony; and crying with full voice,

"Traitor, come out, ye are trapped at last," aroused

Lancelot, who rushing outward lionlike Leapt on him, and hurl'd him headlong, and he fell

Stunn'd and his creatures took and bare him off, And all was still.

is come,

Then she, "The end

And I am shamed for ever;" and he said:

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Mine be the shame, mine was the sin; but rise,

And fly to my strong castle over-seas.

There will I hide thee till my life shall end,

There hold thee with my life against the world."

She answer'd: "Lancelot, wilt thou hold

me so?

Nay, friend, for we have taken our farewells.

Would God that thou couldst hide me from myself!

Mine is the shame, for I was wife, and thou

Unwedded; yet rise now, and let us fly,
For I will draw me into sanctuary,
And bide my doom." So Lancelot got
her horse,

Set her thereon, and mounted on his own,

And then they rode to the divided way, There kiss'd, and parted weeping; for he passed,

Love-loyal to the least wish of the Queen, Back to his land; but she to Almesbury Fled all night long by glimmering waste

and weald,

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"Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill!

Late, late, so late! but we can enter still.
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.

"No light had we; for that we do repent, And learning this, the bridegroom will relent. Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.

"No light so late! and dark and chill the night!

O, let us in, that we may find the light!
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.

"Have we not heard the bridegroom is so sweet!

O, let us in, tho' late, to kiss his feet!
No, no, too late! ye cannot enter now."

So sang the novice, while full passionately,

Her head upon her hands, remembering Her thought when first she came, wept the sad Queen.

Then said the little novice, prattling to her:

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