I had been sitting by her tomb
   In torpor one dark night;
When fitful tremours shook the doom
Of cold lethargic settled gloom,
   That weighed upon my sight: 

And while I sat, and sickly heaves
   Disturbed my spirit’s sloth,
A wind came, blown o’er distant sheaves,
That hissing, tore and lashed the leaves
   And lashed the undergrowth: 

It roared and howled, it raged about
   With some determined aim;
And storming up the night, brought out
The moon, that like a happy shout,
   Called forth My Lady’s name,

In sudden splendour on the stone. 
   Then, for an instant, I
Snatched and heaped up my past, bestrown
With hopes and kisses, struggling moan,
   And pangs:  as suddenly,

Oppressed with overwhelming weight,
   Down fell the edifice;
When touched, as by the hand of Fate,
My gloom was gone.  I felt my state
   So light, I sobbed for bliss.

The loud winds, spent in seeking rest,
   Dropped dead.  My fevered brow
Drank coolness from the grass it pressed;
And in my desolated breast
   A change began to grow,

While feeling those tears slowly drain
   The load of grief which had
A sluggish curse within me lain,
Save when remembrance wrought my brain
   For vivid moments mad.

My tears, as treasures of a wreck
   That in the ocean slept,
Recovered, ran without a check;
And earth was my good mother’s neck
   To which I clung and wept.

I rose at length, and felt a dense
   Benumbed dead weight.  And now
The night air hung in deep suspense! 
A singing hush that pressed my sense
   And stunned me like a blow: 

Through my lids clenched the living air
   In gold and purple rings
Danced musically round me there,
The light it held throbbed with the glare
   And beat of rapid wings.

Mine eyes I dared not try to raise;
   My Lady’s beamed on me
In fixed serenity of gaze,
And were what old sunshiny days
   In childhood used to be.

A gasping lapse; and I was whirled
   Round the faint void of space;
In dizzy circles hugely hurled,
I saw the constellated world
   With every orb embrace,

To one stupendous vortex-light,
   Spinning a fiery ram,
Then fail, struck out by sudden night;
When swung adown in headlong might,
   Earth’s touch shook through my brain.

The dumb sound in mine ears was burst
   By her portentous voice;
As sweet as death to one accursed,
As unto one near blind for thirst
   A running water’s noise.

Her voice in some translucent star,
   Remote, beyond my sight,
Was singing marvellously far;
And yet so strangely near to jar,
   As jars too strong a light.

She sang a song.  She warbled low,
   She did not sing in words;
I felt it in my spirit glow,
And knew it, as with joy I know
   The morning shouts of birds.