A MEDLEY.
143
And hatred of her weakness, blent with shame.
Old studies fail’d: seldom she spoke; but oft
Clomb to the roofs, and gazed alone for hours
On that disastrous leaguer, swarms of men
Darkening her female field: void was her use;
And she as one that climbs a peak to gaze
O’er land and main, and sees a great black cloud
Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night,
Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore,
And suck the blinding splendour from the sand,
And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn
Expunge the world; so fared she gazing there;
So blacken’d all her world in secret, blank
And waste it seem’d and vain; till down she came
And found fair peace once more among the sick.
Old studies fail’d: seldom she spoke; but oft
Clomb to the roofs, and gazed alone for hours
On that disastrous leaguer, swarms of men
Darkening her female field: void was her use;
And she as one that climbs a peak to gaze
O’er land and main, and sees a great black cloud
Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night,
Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore,
And suck the blinding splendour from the sand,
And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn
Expunge the world; so fared she gazing there;
So blacken’d all her world in secret, blank
And waste it seem’d and vain; till down she came
And found fair peace once more among the sick.
And twilight dawn’d; and morn by morn the lark
Shot up and shrill’d in flickering gyres, but I
Lay silent in the muffled cage of life:
And twilight gloom’d; and broader grown the bowers
Shot up and shrill’d in flickering gyres, but I
Lay silent in the muffled cage of life:
And twilight gloom’d; and broader grown the bowers
