XIV.

1.

MAUD has a garden of roses

And lilies fair on a lawn;

There she walks in her state

And tends upon bed and bower,

And thither I climb'd at dawn

And stood by her garden-gate ;

A lion ramps at the top,

He is claspt by a passion-flower.

2.

Maud's own little oak-room

(Which Maud, like a precious stone

Set in the heart of the carven gloom,

Lights with herself, when alone

She sits by her music and books,

And her brother lingers late

With a roystering company) looks

Upon Maud's own garden gate :

And I thought as I stood, if a hand, as white
As ocean-foam in the moon, were laid

On the hasp of the window, and my Delight

Had a sudden desire, like a glorious ghost, to glide

Like a beam of the seventh Heaven, down to my

side,

There were but a step to be made.

3.

The fancy flatter'd my mind,

And again seem'd overbold;

Now I thought that she cared for me,

Now I thought she was kind

Only because she was cold.

4.

I heard no sound where I stood

But the rivulet on from the lawn

Running down to my own dark wood;

Or the voice of the long sea-wave as it swell'd

Now and then in the dim-gray dawn;

But I look'd, and round, all round the house I

beheld

The death-white curtain drawn ;

Felt a horror over me creep,

Prickle my skin and catch my breath,

Knew that the death-white curtain meant but

sleep,

Yet I shudder'd and thought like a fool of the sleep

of death.

XV

So dark a mind within me dwells,

And I make myself such evil cheer,

That if I be dear to some one else,

Then some one else may have much to fear;

But if I be dear to some one else,

Then I should be to myself more dear.

Shall I not take care of all that I think,

Yea, ev'n of wretched meat and drink,

If I be dear,

If I be dear to some one else.

XVI.

1.

THIS lump of earth has left his estate

The lighter by the loss of his weight;

And so that he find what he went to seek,
And fulsome Pleasure clog him, and drown

His heart in the gross mud-honey of town,
He may stay for a year who has gone for a week:

But this is the day when I must speak,

And I see my Oread coming down,

O this is the day!

O beautiful creature, what am I

That I dare to look her way;

Think I may hold dominion sweet,