Like waning stars! Lo there, her pale sad face
Becurtained in loose hair! Now he can trace
Athwart that gleaming moon her mouth's droopt bow
To tell all truth about her, and her woe
And dreadful store of knowledge. As one shockt
To worse than death lookt she, with horror lockt
Behind her tremulous tragic-moving lips:
"O love, O love," saith he, and saying, slips
Out of the bed: "Who hath dared do thee wrong?"
No answer hath she, but she looks him long
And deep, and looking, fades. He sleeps no more,
But up and down he pads the beaten floor,
And all that day his heart's wild crying hears,
And can thank God for gracious dew of tears
And tender thoughts of her, not thoughts of shame.
So came the next night, and with night she came,
Dream-Helen; and he knew then he must go
Whence she had come. His need would have it so--
And her need. Never must she call in vain.
Now takes he way alone over the plain
Where dark yet hovers like a catafalque
And all life swoons, and only dead thing walk,
Uneasy sprites denied a resting space,
That shudder as they flit from place to place,
Like bats of flaggy wing that make night blink
With endless quest: so do those dead, men think,
Who fall and are unserved by funeral rite.
These passes he, and nears the walls of might
Which Godhead built for proud Laomedon,
And knows the house of Paris built thereon,
Terraced and set with gadding vines and trees
And ever falling water, for the ease
Of that sweet indweller he held in store.
Thither he turns him quaking, but before
Him dares not look, lest he should see her there
Aglimmer through the dusk and, unaware,
Discover her fill some mere homely part
Intolerably familiar to his heart,
And deeply there enshrined and glorified,
Laid up with bygone bliss. Yet on he hied,
Being called, and ever closer on he came
As if no wrong nor misery nor shame
Could harder be than not to see her--Nay,
Even if within that smooth thief's arms she lay
Besmothered in his kisses--rather so
Had he stood stabbed to see, than on to go
His round of lonely exile!
Now he stands
Beneath her house, and on his spear his hands
Rest, and upon his hands he grounds his chin,
And motionless abides till day come in;
Pure of his vice, that he m