Beatrice
Send out the singers—let the room be still;
They have not eased my pain nor brought me sleep,
Close out the sun, for I would have it dark
That I may feel how black the grave will be.
The sun is setting, for the light is red,
And you are outlined in a golden fire,
Like Ursula upon an altar-screen.
Come, leave the light and sit beside my bed,
For I have had enough of saints and prayers.
Strange broken thoughts are beating in my brain,
They come and vanish and again they come.
It is the fever driving out my soul,
And Death stands waiting by the arras there.
Ornella, I will speak, for soon my lips
Shall keep a silence till the end of time.
You have a mouth for loving—listen then:
Keep tryst with Love before Death comes to tryst;
For I, who die, could wish that I had lived
A little closer to the world of men,
Not watching always through the blazoned panes
That show the world in chilly greens and blues
And grudge the sunshine that would enter in.
I was no part of all the troubled crowd
That moved beneath the palace windows here,
And yet sometimes a knight in shining steel
Would pass and catch the gleaming of my hair,
And wave a mailèd hand and smile at me.
I made no sign to him and turned away,
Frightened and yet glad and full of dreams.
Ah, dreams and dreams that asked no answering!
I should have wrought to make my dreams come true.
But all my life was like an autumn day,
Full of gray quiet and a hazy peace.
What was I saying? All is gone again.
It seemed but now I was the little child
Who played within a garden long ago.
Beyond the walls the festal trumpets blared.
Perhaps they carried some Madonna by
With tossing ensigns in a sea of flowers,
A painted Virgin with a painted Child,
Who saw for once the sweetness of the sun
Before they shut her in an altar-niche
Where tapers smoke against the windy gloom.
I gathered roses redder than my gown
And played that I was Saint Elizabeth,
Whose wine had turned to roses in her hands.
And as I played, a child came through the gate,
A boy who looked at me without a word,
As though he saw stretch far behind my head,
Long lines of radiant angels, row on row.
That day we spoke a little, timidly,
And after that I never heard his voice;
Never again in after years his voice
That sang so many songs for love of me.
He was content to stand and watch me pass,
To seek for me at matins every day,
Where I could feel his eyes, although I prayed.
I think if he had stretched his hands to me,
Or moved his lips to say a single word,
I might have loved him….
Ornella, are you there? I cannot see—
Is every one so lonely when he dies?
The room is filled with lights—with waving lights—
Who are the men and women round the bed?
What have I said, Ornella? Have they heard?
There was no evil hidden in my life,
And yet, oh never, never let them know—
Am I not floating in a mist of light?
Oh, lift me up and I shall reach the sun!