And the power it's glimpses bring
Had, with one awful shadow, quelled
The passion of their grief. They sate
With linked hands, for unrepelled205
Had Helen taken Rosalind's.
Like the autumn wind, when it unbinds
The tangled locks of the nightshade's hair,
Which is twined in the sultry summer air
Round the walls of an outworn sepulchre,210
Did the voice of Helen, sad and sweet,
And the sound of her heart that ever heat,
As with sighs and words she breathed on her,
Unbind the knots of her friend's despair,
Till her thoughts were free to float and flow215
And from her labouring bosom now,
Like the bursting of a prisoned flame,
The voice of a long pent sorrow came.
ROSALIND.
I saw the dark earth fall upon
The coffin; and I saw the stone220
Laid over him whom this cold breast
Had pillowed to his nightly rest!
Thou knowest not, thou canst[1] not know
My agony. Oh! I could not weep:
The sources whence such blessings flow225
Were not to be approached by me!
But I could smile, and I could sleep,
Though with a self-accusing heart.
In morning's light, in evening's gloom,
I watched,—and would not thence depart—[2]230
- ↑ In Shelley’s edition, can'st.
- ↑ The consistency of this with other statements is not a matter of much importance; but Rosalind does not keep her promise (line 248, p. 19) of telling the truth; for further on she says she went straight away on hearing the will (line 523 et seq., p. 28),—an inaccuracy probably incidental to the interruption of the work. See
note 1, p. 5.
