XLII.

"Ha! ha!" said she, "I knew not this hard life, I thought the worst was simple misery ;

I thought some Fate with pleasure or with strife
Portion'd us-happy days, or else to die;
But there is crime-a brother's bloody knife!
Sweet Spirit, thou hast school'd my infancy:
I'll visit thee for this, and kiss thine eyes,
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;

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.

XLIV.

See, as they creep along the river side,

How she doth whisper to that aged dame, And, after looking round the champaign wide, Shows her a knife.-"What feverous hectic flame Burns in thee, child?—what good can thee betide That thou shouldst smile again?"-The evening

came,

And they had found Lorenzo's earthy bed;

The flint was there, the berries at his head.

XLV.

Who hath not loiter'd in a green churchyard,
And let his spirit, like a demon mole,
Work through the clayey soil and gravel hard,

To see skull, coffin'd bones, and funeral stole ;
Pitying each form that hungry Death hath marr'd,
And filling it once more with human soul?
Ah! this is holiday to what was felt

When Isabella by Lorenzo knelt.

XLVI.

She gazed into the fresh-thrown mould, as though
One glance did fully all its secrets tell;
Clearly she saw, as other eyes would know
Pale limbs at bottom of a crystal well;
Upon the murderous spot she seem'd to grow,
Like to a native lily of the dell :

Then with her knife, all sudden she began
To dig more fervently than misers can.

XLVII.

Soon she turn'd up a soiled glove, whereon
Her silk had play'd in purple phantasies;
She kiss'd it with a lip more chill than stone,
And put it in her bosom, where it dries
And freezes utterly unto the bone

Those dainties made to still an infant's cries: Then 'gan she work again; nor stay'd her care, But to throw back at times her veiling hair.

XLVIII.

That old nurse stood beside her wondering,
Until her heart felt pity to the core
At sight of such a dismal labouring,

And so she kneeled, with her locks all hoar,

Good And put her lean hands to the horrid thing :\

Three hours they labour'd at this travail sore;
At last they felt the kernel of the grave,
And Isabella did not stamp and rave.

XLIX.

(Ah! wherefore all this wormy circumstance?
Why linger at the yawning tomb so long?
O for the gentleness of old Romance,

The simple plaining of a minstrel's song!
Fair reader, at the old tale take a glance,

For here, in truth, it doth not well belong
To speak :-O turn thee to the very tale,
And taste the music of that vision pale.

L.

With duller steel than the Perséan sword
They cut away no formless monster's head,
But one, whose gentleness did well accord [said,
With death, as life. The ancient harps have
Love never dies, but lives, immortal Lord :

If Love impersonate was ever dead,
Pale Isabella kiss'd it, and low moan'd.

'Twas love; cold,—dead indeed, but not dethron'd.

LI.

In anxious secrecy they took it home,

And then the prize was all for Isabel :
She calm'd its wild hair with a golden comb,
And all around each eye's sepulchral cell
Pointed each fringed lash; the smeared loam

With tears, as chilly as a dripping well,
She drench'd away: and still she comb'd and kept
Sighing all day-and still she kiss'd and wept.

LII.

Then in a silken scarf,-sweet with the dews
Of precious flowers pluck'd in Araby,
And divine liquids come with odorous ooze

Through the cold serpent-pipe refreshfully,She wrapp'd it up; and for its tomb did choose A garden-pot, wherein she laid it by,

And cover'd it with mould, and o'er it set

Sweet Basil, which her tears kept ever wet.

LIII.

and sun,

And she forgot the stars, the moon,
And she forgot the blue above the trees.
And she forgot the dells where waters run,

And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze;
She had no knowledge when the day was done,
And the new morn she saw not: but in peace
Hung over her sweet Basil evermore,
And moisten'd it with tears unto the core.

LIV.

grew,

And so she ever fed it with thin tears,
Whence thick, and green, and beautiful it
So that it smelt more balmy than its peers
Of Basil-tufts in Florence; for it drew
Nurture besides, and life, from human fears, [view:
From the fast mouldering head there shut from
So that the jewel, safely casketed,

Came forth, and in perfumed leaflets spread.

LV.

O Melancholy, linger here awhile!

O Music, Music, breathe despondingly! O Echo, Echo, from some sombre isle,

Unknown, Lethean, sigh to us-O sigh! Spirits in grief, lift up your heads, and smile;

Lift up your heads, sweet Spirits, heavily, And make a pale light in your cypress glooms, Tinting with silver wan your marble tombs.

LVI.

Moan hither, all ye syllables of woe,

From the deep throat of sad Melpomene !
Through bronzed lyre in tragic order go,
And touch the strings into a mystery;
Sound mournfully upon the winds and low;
For simple Isabel is soon to be
Among the dead: She withers, like a palm
Cut by an Indian for its juicy balm.