XIV

1.

Maud has a garden of roses

And lilies fair on a lawn;

There she walks in her state

And tends upon bed and bower;

And thither I climb' d at dawn

And stood by her garden-gate;

A lion ramps at the top,

He is claspt by a passion-flower.

2.

Maud's own little oak-room

(Which Maud, like a precious stone

Set in the heart of the carven gloom,

Lights with herself, when alone

She sits by her music and books,

And her brother lingers late

With a roystering company) looks

Upon Maud's own garden gate:

And I thought as I stood, if a hand, as white

As ocean-foam in the moon, were laid

On the hasp of the window, and my Delight

Had a sudden desire, like a glorious ghost, to glide

Like a beam of the seventh Heaven, down to my side,

There were but a step to be made.

3.

The fancy flatter' d my mind,

And again seem'd overbold;

Now I thought that she cared for me,

Now I thought she was kind

Only because she was cold.

4.

I heard no sound where I stood

But the rivulet on from the lawn

Running down to my own dark wood;

Or the voice of the long sea-wave as it swell'd

Now and then in the dim-gray dawn;

But I look'd, and round, all round the house I beheld

The death-white curtain drawn;

Felt a horror over me creep,

Prickle my skin and catch my breath,

Knew that the death-white curtain meant but sleep,

Yet I shudder'd and thought like a fool of the sleep of death.