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 Pale, with the whole world's judgment in his eyes, He stood and saw the grief and shame endure That he, though highest of angels might not cure, And the same sins done under the same skies, And the same slaves to the same tyrants thrown, And fain he would have slept, and fain been stone.

But with unslumbering eyes he watched the sleep That sealed her sense whose eyes were suns of old; And the night shut and opened, and behold, The same grave where those prophets came to weep, But she that lay therein had moved and stirred, And where those twain had watched her stood a third.

The tripled rhyme that closed in Paradise With Love's name sealing up its starry speech— The tripled might of hand that found in reach All crowns beheld far off of all men's eyes, Song, colour, carven wonders of live stone— These were not, but the very soul alone.

The living spirit, the good gift of grace, The faith which takes of its own blood to give That the dead veins of buried hope may live, Came on her sleeping, face to naked face, And from a soul more sweet than all the south Breathed love upon her sealed and breathless mouth.