Page:Early poems of William Morris.djvu/130

, as she passes

Is there any who will dare

To climb up the yellow stair,

Glorious Rapunzel's golden hair?

If it would please God make you sing again,

I think that I might very sweetly die,

My soul somehow reach heaven in joyous pain,

My heavy body on the beech-nuts lie.

Now I remember; what a most strange year,

Most strangle and awful, in the beechen wood

I have pass'd now; I still have a faint fear

It is a kind of dream not understood.

I have seen no one in this wood except

The witch and her; have heard no human tones,

But when the witches' revelry has crept

Between the very jointing of my bones.

Ah! I know now; I could not go away.

But needs must stop to hear her sing that song

She always sings at dawning of the day.

I am not happy here, for I am strong,

And every morning do I whet my sword,

Yet Rapunzel still weeps within the tower,

And still God ties me down to the green sward,

Because I cannot see the gold stair floating lower.