long darkness flowed away
     With muffled pulses.  Then, as midnight makes
     Her giant heart of Memory and Tears
     Drink the pale drug of silence, and so beat
     Sleep’s heavy measure, they from head to feet
     Were moveless, looking through their dead black years,
     By vain regret scrawled over the blank wall. 
     Like sculptured effigies they might be seen
     Upon their marriage-tomb, the sword between;
     Each wishing for the sword that severs all.

     II

     It ended, and the morrow brought the task. 
     Her eyes were guilty gates, that let him in
     By shutting all too zealous for their sin: 
     Each sucked a secret, and each wore a mask. 
     But, oh, the bitter taste her beauty had! 
     He sickened as at breath of poison-flowers: 
     A languid humour stole among the hours,
     And if their smiles encountered, he went mad,
     And raged deep inward, till the light was brown
     Before his vision, and the world, forgot,
     Looked wicked as some old dull murder-spot. 
     A star with lurid beams, she seemed to crown
     The pit of infamy:  and then again
     He fainted on his vengefulness, and strove
     To ape the magnanimity of love,
     And smote himself, a shuddering heap of pain.

     III

     This was the woman; what now of the man? 
     But pass him.  If he comes beneath a heel,
     He shall be crushed until he cannot feel,
     Or, being callous, haply till he can. 
     But he is nothing:- nothing?  Only mark
     The rich light striking out from her on him! 
     Ha! what a sense it is when her eyes swim
     Across the man she singles, leaving dark
     All else!  Lord God, who mad’st the thing so fair,
     See that I am drawn to her even now! 
     It cannot be such harm on her cool brow
     To put a kiss?  Yet if I meet him there! 
     But she is mine!  Ah, no!  I know too well
     I claim a star whose light is overcast: 
     I claim a phantom-woman in the Past. 
     The hour has struck, though I heard not the bell!

     IV

     All other joys of life he strove to warm,
     And magnify, and catch them to his lip: 
     But they had suffered shipwreck with the ship,
     And gazed upon him sallow from the storm. 
     Or if Delusion came, ’twas but to show
     The coming minute mock the one that went. 
     Cold as a mountain in its star-pitched tent,
     Stood high Philosophy, less friend than foe: 
     Whom self-caged Passion, from its prison-bars,
     Is always watching with a wondering hate. 
     Not till the fire is dying in the grate,
     Look we for any kinship with the stars. 
     Oh, wisdom never comes when it is gold,
     And the great price we pay for it full worth: 
     We have it only when we are half earth. 
     Little avails that coinage to the old!