How could I leave thee thus, Eurydice? 
Without one look, one glance, Eurydice? 
And I perchance no more to gaze on thee,
Snared by some fatal falsehood from thy side? 
Yet strove I hard; until at length I came
Where Lethe flow’d before me, faint and dim;
Ye gods! how could I cross it from my love,
That might wash out her memory for aye;
That I should live and dream of her no more;
That I should live and love her never more;
That I should sing no more, Eurydice;
That I should leave her in the grip of Hell,
Nor bear her forth e’en on the wings of thought. 
And so I turn’d to gaze, Eurydice! 
I turn’d to clasp thee, O Eurydice!—­
And lo! thy form straightway dissolved away;
Thy beauty in the light dissolved away;
And Hades and all things dissolved away;
Until I found me on thy cold, cold grave,
Amid the grass that I would grew o’er me,
Clasping us close within one narrow home,
Where I no more might wake and find thee gone.—­
The earth oped not unto my frantic cries;
The portals closed thee from me evermore—­
Else had I melted Hell itself with prayers,
And borne thee back to Earth triumphantly.

I cried, heart-stricken, on Proserpina;
I rent the rocks around with endless prayers;
I told her all the story of our love,
I launch’d my sorrows on her woman’s heart;
I sought her through the barren winter-time,
The woful winter-time for Earth and me;
And, “Oh!” I thought, “her soul will soon relent,
And rush in crystal torrents from her eyes,
Till in the joy of sympathetic tears,
She woo my love from Pluto’s stony heart.” 
I waited, and I question’d long the Spring;
I question’d every flower and budding spray,
If thou didst come among them back again;
I conjured each bright blossom, each green leaf,
That, leaving Earth, she bears full-arm’d to Dis,
But backward flingeth ere her glad return,
That every step of glorious liberty,
Fall upon flowers throughout the happy land;
But never came response, Eurydice,—­
The flowers were dumb, O lost Eurydice! 
They would not see thee spring from Earth like them,
Outshining all their fainter loveliness,
And so they left me to my lorn despair;
She left me lorn, O false Proserpina! 
And never more may I behold thee here,
In Spring or Summer, O Eurydice! 
By day or night, O lost Eurydice!

They shall not keep me from thee, O beloved! 
Dis shall not keep me from thee, O beloved;
But I shall shake his gates in my despair,
Until they open wide to let me pass;
I’ll take my life up like a mighty rock,
And so beat breaches in the walls of Time;
I’ll cast existence from me like a wrestler’s robes,
And with my supple, naked soul throw Fate;
I’ll snap the shackles whose Promethean links
Bind down my soul unto this narrow earth.—­
Dost hear my voice dim floating to thee now,
Along the waves that ripple at my feet? 
Thus do I come to thee, Eurydice,
Through waving water-floods, Eurydice,
I come, I come, beloved Eurydice!