Page:Keats - Poetical Works, DeWolfe, 1884.djvu/192

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At sight of such a dismal laboring,
 * And so she kneeled, with her locks all hoar,

And put her lean hands to the horrid thing:
 * Three hours they labor'd at this travail sore;

At last they felt the kernel of the grave, And Isabella did not stamp and rave.

Ah! wherefore all this wormy circumstance?
 * Why linger at the yawning tomb so long?

O for the gentleness of old Romance,
 * The simple plaining of a minstrel's song!

Fair reader, at the old tale take a glance,
 * For here, in truth, it doth not well belong

To speak:—O turn thee to the very tale, And taste the music of that vision pale.

With duller steel than the Persean sword
 * They cut away no formless monster's head,

But one, whose gentleness did well accord
 * With death, as life. The ancient harps have said,

Love never dies, but lives, immortal Lord:
 * If Love impersonate was ever dead,

Pale Isabella kiss'd it, and low moan'd. 'Twas love; cold—dead indeed, but not dethroned.

In anxious secrecy they took it home,
 * And then the prize was all for Isabel:

She calm'd its wild hair with a golden comb,
 * And all around each eye's sepulchral cell

Pointed each fringed lash; the smeared loam