soul in pain?
Or hast thou then no comfortable word?
Is there no faith in thee wherewith to atone
For his unfaith who left me here alone,
Heart-sick with hope deferred;
Oh, since my love will never come again,
Bring'st thou no respite through the desolate years,
Respite from these most unavailing tears?"

Then saw I, and mine own tears made response,
Her woman's heart come breaking through her eyes;
And, as I stood beneath the tower's grey wall,
She let the soft waves of her deep hair fall
Like flowers from Paradise
Over my fevered face: then all at once
Pity was passion; and like a sea of bliss
Those waves rolled o'er me drowning for her kiss.

* * * *

Seven years we dwelt together in that tower,
Seven years in that old palace by the sea,
And sitting at that casement, side by side,
She told me all her pain: how love had died
Now for all else but me;
Yet how she had loved that other: like a flower
Her red lips parted and with low sweet moan
She pressed their tender suffering on mine own.

And always with vague eyes she gazed afar,
Out through the casement o'er the changing tide;
And slowly was my heart's hope brought to nought
That some day I should win each wandering thought
And make her my soul's bride:
Still, still she gazed across the cold sea-bar;
Ay; with her hand in mine, still, still and pale,
Waited and watched for the unreturning sail.

And I, too, watched and waited as the years
Rolled on; and slowly was I brought to feel
How on my lips she met her lover's kiss,
How my heart's pulse begat an alien bliss;
And cold and hard as steel
For me those eyes were, though their tender tears
Were salt upon my cheek; and then one night
I saw a sail come through the pale moonlight.

And like an alien ghost I stole away,
And like a breathing lover he returned;
And in the woods I dwelt, or sometimes crept
Out in the grey dawn while the lovers slept
And the great sea-tides yearned
Against the iron shores; and faint and grey
The tower and the shut casement rose above:
And on the earth I sobbed out all my love.

At last, one royal rose-hung night in June,
When the warm air like purple Hippocrene
Brimmed the dim va