Page:Poems - volume 1 - EBBrowning (1844).pdf/272

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244
LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP.

With such wrong and woe exhausted—what I suffered and occasioned,—
As a wild horse, through a city, runs with lightning in his eyes,
And then dashing at a church's cold and passive wall, impassioned,
Strikes the death into his burning brain, and blindly drops and dies—

So I fell, struck down before her! Do you blame me, friend, for weakness?
'Twas my strength of passion slew me I—fell before her like a stone;
Fast the dreadful world rolled from me, on its roaring wheels of blackness!
When the light came I was lying in this chamber—and alone.

Oh, of course, she charged her lacqueys to bear out the sickly burden,
And to cast it from her scornful sight—but not beyond the gate—