Her loveliness with shame and with surprise
   Froze my swift speech: she turning on my face
The star-like sorrows of immortal eyes,
   Spoke slowly in her place.

‘I had great beauty: ask thou not my name:
   No one can be more wise than destiny.
Many drew swords and died. Where’er I came
   I brought calamity.’

‘No marvel, sovereign lady: in fair field
   Myself for such a face had boldly died,’
I answer’d free; and turning I appeal’d
   To one that stood beside.

But she, with sick and scornful looks averse,
   To her full height her stately stature draws;
‘My youth,’ she said, ‘was blasted with a curse:
   This woman was the cause.

‘I was cut off from hope in that sad place,
   Which men call’d Aulis in those iron years:
My father held his hand upon his face;
   I, blinded with my tears,

‘Still strove to speak: my voice was thick with sighs
   As in a dream. Dimly I could descry
The stern black-bearded kings with wolfish eyes,
   Waiting to see me die.

‘The high masts flicker’d as they lay afloat;
   The crowds, the temples, waver’d, and the shore;
The bright death quiver’d at the victim’s throat;
   Touch’d; and I knew no more.’

Whereto the other with a downward brow:
   ‘I would the white cold heavy-plunging foam,
Whirl’d by the wind, had roll’d me deep below,
   Then when I left my home.’

Her slow full words sank thro’ the silence drear,
   As thunder-drops fall on a sleeping sea:
Sudden I heard a voice that cried, ‘Come here,
   That I may look on thee.’

I turning saw, throned on a flowery rise,
   One sitting on a crimson scarf unroll’d;
A queen, with swarthy cheeks and bold black eyes,
   Brow-bound with burning gold.

She, flashing forth a haughty smile, began:
   ‘I govern’d men by change, and so I sway’d
All moods. ’Tis long since I have seen a man.
   Once, like the moon, I made

‘The ever-shifting currents of the blood
   According to my humour ebb and flow.
I have no men to govern in this wood:
   That makes my only woe.

‘Nay–yet it chafes me that I could not bend
   One will; nor tame and tutor with mine eye
That dull cold-blooded Cæsar. Prythee, friend,
   Where is Mark Antony?

‘The man, my lover, with whom I rode sublime
   On Fortune’s neck: we sat as God by God:
The Nilus would have risen before his time
   And flooded at our nod.

‘We drank the Libyan Sun to sleep, and lit
   Lamps which out-burn’d Canopus. O my life
In Egypt! O the dalliance and the wit,
   The flattery and the strife,

‘And the wild kiss, when fresh from war’s alarms,
   My Hercules, my Roman Antony,
My mailed Bacchus leapt into my arms,
   Contented there to die!

‘And there he died: and when I heard my name
   Sigh’d forth with life I would not brook my fear
Of the other: with a worm I balk’d his fame.
   What else was left? look here!’

(With that she tore her robe apart, and half
   The polish’d argent of her breast to sight
Laid bare. Thereto she pointed with a laugh,
   Showing the aspick’s bite.)

‘I died a Queen. The Roman soldier found
   Me lying dead, my crown about my brows,
A name for ever!–lying robed and crown’d,
   Worthy a Roman spouse.’

Her warbling voice, a lyre of widest range
   Struck by all passion, did fall down and glance
From tone to tone, and glided thro’ all change
   Of liveliest utterance.

When she made pause I knew not for delight;
   Because with sudden motion from the ground
She raised her piercing orbs, and fill’d with light
   The interval of sound.

Still with their fires Love tipt his keenest darts;
   As once they drew into two burning rings
All beams of Love, melting the mighty hearts
   Of captains and of kings.

Slowly my sense undazzled. Then I heard
   A noise of some one coming thro’ the lawn,
And singing clearer than the crested bird
   That claps his wings at dawn.

‘The torrent brooks of hallow’d Israel
   From craggy hollows pouring, late and soon,
Sound all night long, in falling thro’ the dell,
   Far-heard beneath the moon.

‘The balmy moon of blessed Israel
   Floods all the deep-blue gloom with beams divine:
All night the splinter’d crags that wall the dell
   With spires of silver shine.’

As one that museth where broad sunshine laves
   The lawn by some cathedral, thro’ the door
Hearing the holy organ rolling waves
   Of sound on roof and floor

Within, and anthem sung, is charm’d and tied
   To where he stands,–so stood I, when that flow
Of music left the lips of her that died
   To save her father’s vow;

The daughter of the warrior Gileadite,
   A maiden pure; as when she went along
From Mizpeh’s tower’d gate with welcome light,
   With timbrel and with song.

My words leapt forth: ‘Heaven heads the count of crimes
   With that wild oath.’ She render’d answer high:
‘Not so, nor once alone; a thousand times
   I would be born and die.

‘Single I grew, like some green plant, whose root
   Creeps to the garden water-pipes beneath,
Feeding the flower; but ere my flower to fruit
   Changed, I was ripe for death.