turn the white rose into red;
Even as her lawn-clad may-white bosom pressed
Quivering against the bars, while her dark hair
Streamed round her shoulders and her small bare feet
Gleamed in the dusk. Then spake she to her maid--
"I cannot sleep, I cannot sleep to-night.
Bring thy lute hither and sing. Alison, think you
The dead can watch us from their distant world?
Can our dead friends be near us when we weep?
I wish 'twere so! for then my love would come,
No matter then how far, my love would come,
And he'd forgive me."

Then Bess bowed down her lovely head: her breast
Heaved with short sobs, sickening at the heart,
She grasped the casement moaning, "Love, Love, Love,
Come quickly, come, before it is too late,
Come quickly, oh come quickly."
Then her maid
Slipped a soft arm around her and gently drew
The supple quivering body, shaken with sobs,
And all that firm young, sweetness to her breast,
And led her to her couch, and all night long
She watched beside her, till the marriage morn
Blushed in the heartless East. Then swiftly flew
The pitiless moments, till--as in a dream--
And borne along by dreams, or like a lily
Cut from its anchorage in the stream to glide
Down the smooth bosom of an unknown world
Through fields of unknown blossom, so moved Bess
Amongst her maids, as the procession passed
Forth to the little church upon the cliffs,
And, as in those days was the bridal mode,
Her lustrous hair in billowing beauty streamed
Dishevelled o'er her shoulders, while the sun
Caressed her bent and glossy head, and shone
Over the deep blue, white-flaked, wrinkled sea,
On full-blown rosy-petalled sails that flashed
Like flying blossoms fallen from her crown.

BOOK V

I

_With the fruit of Aladdin's garden clustering thick in her hold,
With rubies awash in her scuppers and her bilge ablaze with gold,
A world in arms behind her to sever her heart from home,
The_ Golden Hynde _drove onward over the glittering foam._

II

_If we go as we came, by the Southward, we meet wi' the fleets of Spain!
'Tis a thousand to one against us: we'll turn to the West again!
We have captured a China pilot, his charts and his golden keys:
We'll sail to the golden Gateway, over the golden seas._

Over