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For then, perhaps, as a child of deceit,
She might by a true descent be untrue;
And Maud is as true as Maud is sweet :
Tho' I fancy her sweetness only due
To the sweeter blood by the other side;
Her mother has been a thing complete,
However she came to be so allied.

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,
All, all upon the brother.

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.

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