PRINCE HENRY. 
Thy words fall from thy lips
Like roses from the lips of Angelo:  and angels
Might stoop to pick them up!

ELSIE. 
                Will you not promise?

PRINCE HENRY. 
If ever we depart upon this journey,
So long to one or both of us, I promise.

ELSIE. 
Shall we not go, then?  Have you lifted me
Into the air, only to hurl me back
Wounded upon the ground? and offered me
The waters of eternal life, to bid me
Drink the polluted puddles of the world?

PRINCE HENRY. 
O Elsie! what a lesson thou dost teach me! 
The life which is, and that which is to come,
Suspended hang in such nice equipoise
A breath disturbs the balance; and that scale
In which we throw our hearts preponderates,
And the other, like an empty one, flies up,
And is accounted vanity and air! 
To me the thought of death is terrible,
Having such hold on life.  To thee it is not
So much even as the lifting of a latch;
Only a step into the open air
Out of a tent already luminous
With light that shines through its transparent walls! 
O pure in heart! from thy sweet dust shall grow
Lilies, upon whose petals will be written
“Ave Maria” in characters of gold!

III

A STREET IN STRASBURG

Night.  PRINCE HENRY wandering alone, wrapped in a cloak.

PRINCE HENRY. 
Still is the night.  The sound of feet
Has died away from the empty street,
And like an artisan, bending down
His head on his anvil, the dark town
Sleeps, with a slumber deep and sweet. 
Sleepless and restless, I alone,
In the dusk and damp of these walls of stone,
Wander and weep in my remorse!

CRIER OF THE DEAD, ringing a bell. 
      Wake! wake! 
      All ye that sleep! 
      Pray for the Dead! 
      Pray for the Dead!

PRINCE HENRY. 
Hark! with what accents loud and hoarse
This warder on the walls of death
Sends forth the challenge of his breath! 
I see the dead that sleep in the grave! 
They rise up and their garments wave,
Dimly and spectral, as they rise,
With the light of another world in their eyes!

CRIER OF THE DEAD. 
      Wake! wake! 
      All ye that sleep! 
      Pray for the Dead! 
      Pray for the Dead!

PRINCE HENRY,
Why for the dead, who are at rest? 
Pray for the living, in whose breast
The struggle between right and wrong
Is raging terrible and strong,
As when good angels war with devils! 
This is the Master of the Revels,
Who, at Life’s flowing feast, proposes
The health of absent friends, and pledges,
Not in bright goblets crowned with roses,
And tinkling as we touch their edges,
But with his dismal, tinkling bell. 
That mocks and mimics their funeral knell.