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But how this is, sweet maid, I know not, and I cannot know;
I ponder, and I cannot ponder: yet I live and love!"
The daughter of beauty wip'd her pitying tears with her white veil,
And said:—"Alas! I knew not this, and therefore did I weep.
That God would love a worm, I knew, and punish the evil foot
That wilful bruised its helpless form; but that He cherish'd it
With milk and oil, I never knew, and therefore did I weep.
And I complained in the mild air, because I fade away,
And lay me down in thy cold bed, and leave my shining lot."
"Queen of the vales," the matron clay answered; "I heard thy sighs,
And all thy moans flew o'er my roof, but I have call'd them down.
Wilt thou, O queen, enter my house? 'tis given thee to enter.
And to return: fear nothing, enter with thy virgin feet."
The eternal gates' terrific porter lifted the northern bar;
Thel enter'd in and saw the secrets of the land unknown.
She saw the couches of the dead, and where the fibrous root
Of every heart on earth infixes deep its restless twists:
A land of sorrows and of tears, where never smile was seen.
She wander'd in the land of clouds, through valleys dark, listening
Dolours and lamentations; wailing oft beside a dewy grave
She stood in silence, listening to the voices of the ground,
Till to her own grave-plot she came, and there she sat down,
And heard this voice of sorrow breathed from the hollow pit:
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