XXVIII.

"Still strove to speak: my voice was thick with sighs

As in a dream. Dimly I could descry

The stern black-bearded kings with wolfish eyes,
Waiting to see me die.

XXIX.

"The tall masts quivered as they lay afloat,

The temples and the people and the shore; One drew a sharp knife through my tender throat Slowly, and nothing more."

ΧΧΧ.

Whereto the other with a downward brow:

"I would the white cold heavy-plunging foam, Whirled by the wind, had rolled me deep below, Then when I left my home."

XXXI.

Her slow full words sank through the silence drear, As thunder-drops fall on a sleeping sea:

Sudden I heard a voice that cried, "Come here,

'That I may look on thee."

XXXII.

I turning saw, throned on a flowery rise,

One sitting on a crimson scarf unrolled;

A queen with swarthy cheeks and bold black eyes, Brow-bound with burning gold.

XXXIII.

She, flashing forth a haughty smile, began:

"I governed men by change, and so I swayed All moods. 'T is long since I have seen a man. Once, like the moon, I made

XXXIV.

“The ever-shifting currents of the blood
According to my humor ebb and flow.
I have no men to govern in this wood:
That makes my only woe.

66

XXXV.

Nay- yet it chafes me that I could not bend One will; nor tame and tutor with mine eye That dull cold-blooded Cæsar. Prithee, friend, Where is Mark Antony?

XXXVI.

"The man my lover, with whom I rode sublime

On Fortune's neck: we sat as God by God: The Nilus would have risen before his time

And flooded at our nod.

XXXVII.

"We drank the Lybian Sun to sleep, and lit Lamps which outburned Canopus. O my life In Egypt! O the dalliance and the wit,

The flattery and the strife,

XXXVIII.

“And the wild kiss, when fresh from war's alarms,
My Hercules, my Roman Antony,
My mailed Bacchus leapt into my arms,
Contented there to die!

XXXIX.

"And there, he died; and when I heard my name

Sighed forth with life I would not brook my

Of the other: with a worm I balked his fame.

What else was left ?-look here!"

fear

XL.

(With that she tore her robe apart, and half

The polished argent of her breast to sight Laid bare. Thereto she pointed with a laugh, Showing the aspick's bite :)

XLI.

"I died a Queen. The Roman soldier found
Me lying dead, my crown about my brows,
A name forever! -lying robed and crowned,
Worthy a Roman spouse."

XLII.

Her warbling voice, a lyre of widest range

Struck by all passion, did fall down and glance From tone to tone, and glided through all change Of liveliest utterance.

XLIII.

When she made pause I knew not for delight;

Because with sudden motion from the ground She raised her piercing orbs and filled with light The interval of sound.

XLIV.

Still with their fires Love tipt his keenest darts;
As once they drew into two burning rings
All beams of Love, melting the mighty hearts

Of captains and of kings.

XLV.

Slowly my sense undazzled. Then I heard

A noise of some one coming through the lawn, And singing clearer than the crested bird,

That claps his wings at dawn.

XLVI.

"The torrent brooks of hallowed Israel

From craggy hollows pouring, late and soon, Sound all night long, in falling through the dell,

Far-heard beneath the moon.

XLVII.

"The balmy moon of blessed Israel

Floods all the deep-blue gloom with beams divine:

All night the splintered crags that wall the dell

With spires of silver shine."