No word, no look, no motion! yes,1180
There was a change, but spare to guess,
Nor let that moment's hope be told.
I looked, and knew that he was dead,
And fell, as the eagle on the plain
Falls when life deserts her brain,1185
And the mortal lightning is veiled again.
O that I were now dead! but such
(Did they not, love, demand too much
Those dying murmurs?) he forbade.[1]
O that I once again were mad!1190
And yet, dear Rosalind, not so,
For I would live to share thy woe.
Sweet boy, did I forget thee too?
Alas, we know not what we do
When we speak words.
No memory more1195
Is in my mind of that sea shore.
Madness came on me, and a troop
Of misty shapes did seem to sit
Beside me, on a vessel's poop.
And the clear north wind was driving it.1200
Then I heard strange tongues, and saw strange flowers,
And the stars methought grew unlike ours,
And the azure sky and the stormless sea
Made me believe that I had died,
And waked in a world, which was to me1205
Drear hell, though heaven to all beside:
Then a dead sleep fell on my mind,
- ↑ In these three lines I have adopted Mr. Rossetti's punctuation, which rescues from ruin a passage where there is unmistakeable "error in the sense." In Shelley's edition the lines stand thus:—
O that I were now dead! but such
Did they not, love, demand too much
Those dying murmurs? He forbade.
