Page:Keats - Poetical Works, DeWolfe, 1884.djvu/187

Rh

And the sick west continually bereaves
 * Of some gold tinge, and plays a roundelay

Of death among the bushes and the leaves,
 * To make all bare before he dares to stray

From his north cavern. So sweet Isabel By gradual decay from beauty fell,

Because Lorenzo came not. Oftentimes
 * She ask'd her brothers, with an eye all pale,

Striving to be itself, what dungeon climes
 * Could keep him off so long? They spake a tale

Time after time, to quiet her. Their crimes
 * Came on them, like a smoke from Hinnom's vale;

And every night in dreams they groan'd aloud, To see their sister in her snowy shroud.

And she had died in drowsy ignorance,
 * But for a thing more deadly dark than all;

It came like a fierce potion, drunk by chance,
 * Which saves a sick man from the feather'd pall

For some few gasping moments; like a lance,
 * Waking an Indian from his cloudy hall

With cruel pierce, and bringing him again Sense of the gnawing fire at heart and brain.

There was a vision. In the drowsy gloom,
 * The dull of midnight, at her couch's foot

Lorenzo stood, and wept: the forest tomb
 * Had marr'd his glossy hair which once could shoot

Lustre into the sun, and put cold doom