Of one so lost as Helen. Now55
Bewildered by my dire despair,
Wondering I blush, and weep that thou
Should'st love me still,—thou only!—There,
Let us sit on that grey stone,
Till our mournful talk be done.60
HELEN.
Alas! not there; I cannot bear
The murmur of this lake to hear.
A sound from there,[1] Rosalind dear,
Which never yet I heard elsewhere
But in our native land, recurs,65
Even here where now we meet. It stirs
Too much of suffocating sorrow!
In the dell of yon dark chesnut wood
Is a stone seat, a solitude
Less like our own. The ghost of peace70
Will not desert this spot. To-morrow,
If thy kind feelings should not cease,
We may sit here.
ROSALIND.
Thou lead, my sweet,
And I will follow.
HENRY.
'Tis Fenici's seat
Where you are going? This is not the way,75
Mamma; it leads behind those trees that grow
Close to the little river.
- ↑ Mr. Rossetti is doubtless right in thinking thee a misprint for there; and I adopt this fearlessly as one of the corrections Shelley would have made for a "second edition." The sound so painful to Helen is of course "the murmur of the lake," reminding her of the wash of the waves round the fane where Lionel had died: see line 1049, p. 44, et seq.
