Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/206

190 the tenderness of a woman. It was a night devoid of suffering to her. As morning approached, and for two hours previous to the dread moment, she seemed to be in a partial ecstasy, and though not apparently conscious of the coming on of death, she gave her husband all those holy words of love, all the consolation of an oft-repeated blessing, whose value death has made priceless. Such moments are too sacred for the common pen, which pauses as the woman poet raises herself up to die in the arms of her poet husband. He knew not that death had robbed him of his treasure until the drooping form grew chill. . . . Her last words were: "It is beautiful!"