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The lady turn'd her weary from a world; She needed time for penitence, and tears, And earnest prayer might win for her lone cell The peace a palace wanted. Solitude Grew fill'd with gentle thoughts of other years; And one whom she had left in early youth Was now as dear as ever. Once her cheek Was a sweet summer altar for the rose— 'T was now its tomb; and in her dim blue eye Was death; but one tie bound her yet to earth— She could not die till she had look'd again In that beloved face: she sent a ring— Strange she had kept that gift of plighted truth, Though false to all it pledged. The midnight came, And the red torchlight fell upon a knight Who stood beside the dying.

" meet we thus again?" he said; "And meet we thus again? And why should meeting be for those Who only meet in vain? Call others round your dying bed, The loved of many years! The eyes whose smiles were all your own, Those are the eyes for tears. You thought not of me in the hall, When gayer knights were nigh; You thought not of me when the stars Wrote memory on the sky. My heart has been with other thoughts, Of council and of fight;