To tell him of the bliss he had with God;
  Come like a careless and a greedy heir,
  That scarce can wait the reading of the will
  Before he takes possession?  Was mine a mood
  To be invaded rudely, and not rather
  A sacred, secret, unapproached woe
  Unspeakable?  I was shut up with grief;
  She took the body of my past delight,
  Narded, and swathed and balm’d it for herself,
  And laid it in a new-hewn sepulchre,
  Where man had never lain.  I was led mute
  Into her temple like a sacrifice;
  I was the high-priest in her holiest place,
  Not to be loudly broken in upon. 
  Oh! friend, thoughts deep and heavy as these well-nigh
  O’erbore the limits of my brain; but he
  Bent o’er me, and my neck his arm upstay’d
  From earth.  I thought it was an adder’s fold,
  And once I strove to disengage myself,
  But fail’d, I was so feeble.  She was there too: 
  She bent above me too:  her cheek was pale,
  Oh! very fair and pale:  rare pity had stolen
  The living bloom away, as tho’ a red rose
  Should change into a white one suddenly. 
  Her eyes, I saw, were full of tears in the morn,
  And some few drops of that distressful rain
  Being wafted on the wind, drove in my sight,
  And being there they did break forth afresh
  In a new birth, immingled with my own,
  And still bewept my grief.  Keeping unchanged
  The purport of their coinage.  Her long ringlets,
  Drooping and beaten with the plaining wind,
  Did brush my forehead in their to-and-fro: 
  For in the sudden anguish of her heart
  Loosed from their simple thrall they had flowed abroad,
  And onward floating in a full, dark wave,
  Parted on either side her argent neck,
  Mantling her form half way.  She, when I woke,
  After my refluent health made tender quest
  Unanswer’d, for I spoke not:  for the sound
  Of that dear voice so musically low,
  And now first heard with any sense of pain,
  As it had taken life away before,
  Choked all the syllables that in my throat
  Strove to uprise, laden with mournful thanks,
  From my full heart:  and ever since that hour,
  My voice hath somewhat falter’d—­and what wonder
  That when hope died, part of her eloquence
  Died with her?  He, the blissful lover, too,
  From his great hoard of happiness distill’d
  Some drops of solace; like a vain rich man,
  That, having always prosper’d in the world,
  Folding his hands deals comfortable words
  To hearts wounded for ever; yet, in truth,
  Fair speech was his and delicate of phrase,
  Falling in whispers on the sense, address’d
  More to the inward than the outward ear,
  As rain of the midsummer midnight soft
  Scarce-heard, recalling fragrance and the green
  Of the dead spring—­such as in other minds
  Had film’d the margents of the recent wound. 
  And why was I to darken their pure love,