For then, perhaps, as a child of deceit, And fair without, faithful within, Maud to him is nothing akin : Some peculiar mystic grace Made her only the child of her mother, And heap'd the whole inherited sin On that huge scapegoat of the race, 4. Peace, angry spirit, and let him be! Has not his sister smiled on me? 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 E 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. E2 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. |