Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/193

Rh And take her broidery-frame, and there she'll sit

Hour after hour, her gold curls sweeping it;

Lifting her soft-bent head only to mind

Her children, or to listen to the wind.

And when the clock peals midnight, she will move

Her work away, and let her fingers rove

Across the shaggy brows of Tristram's hound,

Who lies, guarding her feet, along the ground;

Or else she will fall musing, her blue eyes

Fixed, her slight hands clasped on her lap; then rise,

And at her prie-dieu kneel, until she have told

Her rosary-beads of ebony tipped with gold;

Then to her soft sleep—and to-morrow'll be

To-day's exact repeated effigy.

Yes, it is lonely for her in her hall.

The children, and the gray-haired seneschal,

Her women, and Sir Tristram's aged hound,

Are there the sole companions to be found.

But these she loves; and noisier life than this

She would find ill to bear, weak as she is.

She has her children, too, and night and day

Is with them; and the wide heaths where they play,

The hollies, and the cliff, and the sea-shore,

The sand, the sea-birds, and the distant sails,

These are to her dear as to them; the tales

With which this day the children she beguiled

She gleaned from Breton grandames, when a child,

In every hut along this sea-coast wild;

She herself loves them still, and, when they are told,

Can forget all to hear them, as of old.

Dear saints, it is not sorrow, as I hear,

Not suffering, which shuts up eye and ear