XIV.

1. Maud has a garden of roses And lilies fair on a lawn: There she walks in her state And tends upon bed and bower And thither I climb'd at dawn And stood by her garden-gate; A lion ramps at the top, He is claspt by a passion-flower.

2. Maud's own little oak-room (Which Maud, like a precious stone Set in the heart of the carven gloom, Lights with herself, when alone She sits by her music and books, And her brother lingers late With a roystering company) looks Upon Maud's own garden gate: And I thought as I stood, if a hand, as white As ocean-foam in the moon, were laid On the hasp of the window, and my Delight Had a sudden desire, like a glorious ghost, to glide, Like a beam of the seventh Heaven, down to my side, There were but a step to be made.

3. The fancy flatter'd my mind, And again seem'd overbold; Now I thought that she cared for me, Now I thought she was kind Only because she was cold.

4. I heard no sound where I stood But the rivulet on from the lawn Running down to my own dark wood; Or the voice of the long sea-wave as it swell'd Now and then in the dim-gray dawn; But I look'd, and round, all round the house I beheld The death-white curtain drawn; Felt a horror over me creep, Prickle my skin and catch my breath, Knew that the death-white curtain meant but sleep, Yet I shudder'd and thought like a fool of the sleep of death.