The earth, until the dewy sleep is shaken
From every living heart which it possesses,
Through seas and winds, cities and wildernesses,
As if the future and the past were all 130
Treasured i’ the instant;—­so Gherardi’s hall
Laughed in the mirth of its lord’s festival,
Till some one asked—­’Where is the Bride?’ And then
A bridesmaid went,—­and ere she came again
A silence fell upon the guests—­a pause 135
Of expectation, as when beauty awes
All hearts with its approach, though unbeheld;
Then wonder, and then fear that wonder quelled;—­
For whispers passed from mouth to ear which drew
The colour from the hearer’s cheeks, and flew 140
Louder and swifter round the company;
And then Gherardi entered with an eye
Of ostentatious trouble, and a crowd
Surrounded him, and some were weeping loud.

They found Ginevra dead! if it be death 145
To lie without motion, or pulse, or breath,
With waxen cheeks, and limbs cold, stiff, and white,
And open eyes, whose fixed and glassy light
Mocked at the speculation they had owned. 
If it be death, when there is felt around 150
A smell of clay, a pale and icy glare,
And silence, and a sense that lifts the hair
From the scalp to the ankles, as it were
Corruption from the spirit passing forth,
And giving all it shrouded to the earth, 155
And leaving as swift lightning in its flight
Ashes, and smoke, and darkness:  in our night
Of thought we know thus much of death,—­no more
Than the unborn dream of our life before
Their barks are wrecked on its inhospitable shore. 160
The marriage feast and its solemnity
Was turned to funeral pomp—­the company,
With heavy hearts and looks, broke up; nor they
Who loved the dead went weeping on their way
Alone, but sorrow mixed with sad surprise 165
Loosened the springs of pity in all eyes,
On which that form, whose fate they weep in vain,
Will never, thought they, kindle smiles again. 
The lamps which, half extinguished in their haste,
Gleamed few and faint o’er the abandoned feast, 170
Showed as it were within the vaulted room
A cloud of sorrow hanging, as if gloom
Had passed out of men’s minds into the air. 
Some few yet stood around Gherardi there,
Friends and relations of the dead,—­and he, 175
A loveless man, accepted torpidly
The consolation that he wanted not;
Awe in the place of grief within him wrought. 
Their whispers made the solemn silence seem
More still—­some wept,... 180
Some melted into tears without a sob,
And some with hearts that might be heard to throb