SELECTIONS IN ENGLISH POETRY
A seraph chosen from the bright abyss
To be my spouse: thy paleness makes me glad :
Thy beauty grows upon me, and I feel
A greater love through all my essence steal.' 320
XLI
The Spirit mourned * Adieu!1—dissolved, and left
The atom darkness in a slow turmoil;
As when of healthful midnight sleep bereft,
Thinking on rugged hours and fruitless toil,
We put our eyes into a pillowy cleft, 325
And see the spangly gloom froth up and boil;
It made sad Isabella's eyelids ache,
And in the dawn she started up awake;
XLII
'Ha ! ha!' said she, 'I knew not this hard life,
I thought the worst was simple misery; 330
I thought some Fate with pleasure or with strife
. Portioned us—happy days, or else to die;
But there is crime—a brother's bloody knife!
Sweet Spirit, thou hast schooled my infancy:
I'll visit thee for this, and kiss thine eyes, 335
And greet thee morn and even in the skies.'
XLIII
When the full morning came, she had devised
How she might secret to the forest hie;
How she might find the clay, so dearly prized,
And^sing to it one latest lullaby; 340
How her short absence might be unsurmised,
While she the inmost of the dream would try*
Resolved, she took with her an aged nurse,
And went into that dismal forest-hearse.
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