"What! is not this my place of strength," she said, "My spacious mansion built for me,

Whereof the strong foundation-stones were laid

Since my first memory?"

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,
And, with dim fretted foreheads all,
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, seemed my soul, 'Mid onward-sloping motions infinite Making for one sure goal.

A still salt pool, locked in with bars of sand;
Left on the shore; that hears all night

The plunging seas draw backward from the land
Their moon-led waters white.

A star that with the choral starry dance
Joined not, but stood, and standing saw
The hollow orb of moving Circumstance
Rolled round by one fixed law.

Back on herself her serpent pride had curled. "No voice," she shrieked in that lone hall, "No voice breaks through 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,

Lost to her place and name;

And death and life she hated equally,
And nothing saw, for her despair,
But dreadful time, dreadful eternity,
No comfort anywhere;

Remaining utterly confused with fears,
And ever worse with growing time,
And ever unrelieved by dismal tears,
And all alone in crime:

Shut up as in a crumbling tomb, girt round
With blackness as a solid wall,

Far off she seemed to hear the dully sound
Of human footsteps fall.

As in strange lands a traveller walking slow,
In doubt and great perplexity,

A little before moon-rise hears the low
Moan of an unknown sea;

And knows not if it be thunder or a sound

Of stones thrown down, or one deep cry Of great wild beasts; then thinketh, "I have found A new land, but I die."

She howled aloud, "I am on fire within.
There comes no murmur of reply.
What is it that will take away my sin,
And save me lest I die?"

So when four years were wholly finished,
She threw her royal robes away.
"Make me a cottage in the vale," she said,

VOL. 1.

"Where I may mourn and pray.

10

"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."

V

LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE.

LADY Clara Vere de Vere,

Of me you shall not win renown;
You thought to break a country heart
For pastime, ere you went to town.
At me you smiled, but unbeguiled
I saw the snare, and I retired:
The daughter of a hundred Earls,
You are not one to be desired.

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. Nor would I break for your sweet sake

A heart that dotes on truer charms.

A simple maiden in her flower

Is worth a hundred coats-of-arms.