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the wrecked life.
(What argosies of hope that tear o'erwhelmed!)
And the eyes closed to prison back the tears
She would not shed; then all was calm again—
A plenitude of hopeless, lifeless calm—
As when, amid the desert, where stood tents
Only a heap of blank grey ashes tells
That life, and joy, and being have been there.
Beside her casement for long hours she sate;
It opened on brown, russet prairies, where
The tawny harvest spread its burnished sea.
She watched it as it rippled into gold,
Stirred by light winds, or slept in yellow flakes
Of yellow foam beneath the quiet stars.
Mute, motionless, and resolute, she sate,
As Rizpah in the time of harvest sate
Beside the corpses of her murdered sons,
Through the long, breathless, scorching summer days,
Through sultry nights lit by the Syrian moon,
Till she outwatched the ravening cruel beasts,
Who shrank before her eye, fierce with the woe,
"The mighty hunger" ne'er to be appeased—
The wild forlornness of a mother's heart—
And thus the Lady sate, and sate, and watched,
And the eyes closed to prison back the tears
She would not shed; then all was calm again—
A plenitude of hopeless, lifeless calm—
As when, amid the desert, where stood tents
Only a heap of blank grey ashes tells
That life, and joy, and being have been there.
Beside her casement for long hours she sate;
It opened on brown, russet prairies, where
The tawny harvest spread its burnished sea.
She watched it as it rippled into gold,
Stirred by light winds, or slept in yellow flakes
Of yellow foam beneath the quiet stars.
Mute, motionless, and resolute, she sate,
As Rizpah in the time of harvest sate
Beside the corpses of her murdered sons,
Through the long, breathless, scorching summer days,
Through sultry nights lit by the Syrian moon,
Till she outwatched the ravening cruel beasts,
Who shrank before her eye, fierce with the woe,
"The mighty hunger" ne'er to be appeased—
The wild forlornness of a mother's heart—
And thus the Lady sate, and sate, and watched,
