Page:Keats - Poetical Works, DeWolfe, 1884.djvu/190

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"Ha! ha!" said she, "I knew not this hard life,
 * I thought the worst was simple misery;

I thought some Fate with pleasure or with strife
 * Portion'd us—happy days, or else to die;

But there is crime—a brother's bloody knife!
 * Sweet Spirit, thou hast school'd my infancy:

I'll visit thee for this, and kiss thine eyes, And greet thee morn and even in the skies."

When the full morning came, she had devised
 * How she might secret to the forest hie;

How she might find the clay, so dearly prized,
 * And sing to it one latest lullaby;

How her short absence might be unsurmised,
 * While she the inmost of the dream would try.

Resolved, she took with her an aged nurse, And went into that dismal forest-hearse.

See, as they creep along the river side,
 * How she doth whisper to that aged dame,

And, after looking round the champaign wide,
 * Shows her a knife.—"What feverous hectic flame

Burns in thee, child?—what good can thee betide
 * That thou shouldst smile again?"—The evening came.

And they had found Lorenzo's earthy bed; The flint was there, the berries at his head.