And there rang on a sudden a passionate cry, A cry for a brother's blood: It will ring in my heart and my ears, till I die, till I die. 2. Is it gone? my pulses beat— What was it? a lying trick of the brain ? Yet I thought I saw her stand, A shadow there at my feet, High over the shadowy land. It is gone; and the heavens fall in a gentle rain, When they should burst and drown with deluging storms The feeble vassals of wine and anger and lust, worms, That sting each other here in the dust; We e are not worthy to live. XXIII. 1. SEE what a lovely shell, Small and pure as a pearl, Lying close to my foot, Frail, but a work divine, Made so fairily well With delicate spire and whorl, How exquisitely minute, A miracle of design! 2. What is it? a learned man Could give it a clumsy name. Let him name it who can, The beauty would be the same. 3. The tiny cell is forlorn, Void of the little living will That made it stir on the shore. Did he stand at the diamond door Of his house in a rainbow frill? Did he push, when he was uncurl'd, A golden foot or a fairy horn. Thro' his dim water-world? 4. Slight, to be crush'd with a tap Of my finger-nail on the sand, Small, but a work divine, Frail, but of force to withstand, Year upon year, the shock Of cataract seas that snap The three-decker's oaken spine Athwart the ledges of rock, Here on the Breton strand! 5. Breton, not Briton; here Like a shipwreck'd man on a coast Of ancient fable and fear- Plagued with a flitting to and fro, That never came from on high Nor ever arose from below, But only moves with the moving eye, Flying along the land and the main Why should it look like Maud? Am I to be overawed By what I cannot but know Is a juggle born of the brain? 6. 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. 7. 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, |