For cherubs and flowers are wreathing
    Our Lady with tender grace;
  Her eyes, cheeks, and lips half-breathing
    Resemble my loved one’s face.

12[16]

  I am not wroth, my own lost love, although
  My heart is breaking—­wroth I am not, no! 
  For all thou dost in diamonds blaze, no ray
  Of light into thy heart’s night finds its way.

  I saw thee in a dream.  Oh, piteous sight! 
  I saw thy heart all empty, all in night;
  I saw the serpent gnawing at thy heart;
  I saw how wretched, O my love, thou art!

13[17]

  When thou shalt lie, my darling, low
    In the dark grave, where they hide thee,
  Then down to thee I will surely go,
    And nestle in beside thee.

  Wildly I’ll kiss and clasp thee there,
    Pale, cold, and silent lying;
  Shout, shudder, weep in dumb despair,
    Beside my dead love dying.

  The midnight calls, up rise the dead,
    And dance in airy swarms there;
  We twain quit not our earthly bed,
    I lie wrapt in your arms there.

  Up rise the dead; the Judgment-day
    To bliss or anguish calls them;
  We twain lie on as before we lay,
    And heed not what befalls them.

14[18]

  A young man loved a maiden,
    But she for another has sigh’d;
  That other, he loves another,
    And makes her at length his bride.

  The maiden marries, in anger,
    The first adventurous wight
  That chance may fling before her;
    The youth is in piteous plight.

  The story is old as ages,
    Yet happens again and again;
  The last to whom it happen’d,
    His heart is rent in twain.

15[19]

  A lonely pine is standing
    On the crest of a northern height;
  He sleeps, and a snow-wrought mantle
    Enshrouds him through the night.

  He’s dreaming of a palm-tree
    Afar in a tropic land,
  That grieves alone in silence
    ’Mid quivering leagues of sand.

16[20]

  My love, we were sitting together
    In a skiff, thou and I alone;
  ’Twas night, very still was the weather,
    Still the great sea we floated on.

  Fair isles in the moonlight were lying,
    Like spirits, asleep in a trance;
  Their strains of sweet music were sighing,
    And the mists heaved in an eery dance.

  And ever, more sweet, the strains rose there,
    The mists flitted lightly and free;
  But we floated on with our woes there,
    Forlorn on that wide, wide sea.

17[21]

  I see thee nightly in dreams, my sweet,
    Thine eyes the old welcome making,
  And I fling me down at thy dear feet
    With the cry of a heart that is breaking.

  Thou lookest at me in woful wise
    With a smile so sad and holy,
  And pearly tear-drops from thine eyes
    Steal silently and slowly.