rom my franker soul:
So--rebel, slave, and worshiper!--
I loved her and I hated her.

I gazed upon her, I, her thrall,
And musing, murmured, _What if death_

_Were just the answer to it all?--
Suppose some dainty dagger quaffed
Her life in one deep eager draught?--
Suppose some amorous knife caressed
The lovely hollow of her breast?"_--
She turned a mocking look to mine:
She read the thought within my eyne,
She held me with her look--and laughed!

Now who may tell what stirs, controls,
And shapes mad fancies into facts?
What trivial things may quicken souls
To irrevocable, swift acts?
Now who has known, who understood,
Wherefore some idle thing
May stab with deadlier sting
Than well-considered insult could?--
May spur the languor of a mood
And rouse a tiger in the blood?--

Ah, Christ!--had she not laughed just when
That fancy came! ... for then ... and then ...
A sudden mist dropped from the sky,

A mist swept in across the sea ...
A mist that hid her face from me ...
A weeping mist all tinged with red,
A dripping mist that smelt like blood ...
It choked my throat, it burnt my brain ...
And through it peered one sallow star,
And through it rang one shriek of pain ...
And when it passed my hands were red,
My soul was dabbled with her blood;
And when it passed my love was dead
And tossed upon the troubled flood.

III

MOONSET

But see! ... the body does not sink;
It rides upon the tide
(A starbeam on the dagger's haft),
With staring eyes and wide ...
And now, up from the darkling sea,
Down from the failing moon,
Are come strange shapes to mock at me ...
All pallid from the star-pale sea,
White from the paling moon ...

Or whirling fast or wheeling slow
Around, around the corpse they go,
All bloodless o'er the sickened sea
Beneath the ailing moon!

And are they only wisps of fog
That dance along the waves?
Only shapes of mist the wind
Drives along the waves?
Or are they spirits that the sea
Has cheated of their graves?
The ghosts of them that died at sea,
Of murdered men flung in the sea,
Whose bodies had no graves?--
Lost souls that haunt for evermore
The sobbing reef and hollowed shore
And always-murmuring caves?

Ah, surely something more than fog,
More than starlit mist!
For starlight never mak