A subject world I lost for thee,
For thou wert all my world to me!
"Then, when the shriekings of the dying
Were heard along the wave,
Soul of my soul! I saw thee flying,
I follow'd thee to save.
The thunder of the brazen prows
O'er Actium's ocean rung,
Fame's garland faded from my brows,
Her wreath away I flung.
I sought, I saw, I heard but thee;
For what to love was victory?"
The two lines in italics have the true Tennysonian ring. Five years afterwards the poet recurred to the same theme in his "Dream of Fair Women," giving us the reverse of the picture. Here Cleopatra speaks:
"O what days and nights
We had in Egypt, ever reaping new
Harvest of ripe delights.
"What dainty strifes, when fresh from war's alarms,
My Hercules, my gallant Antony,
