III

The stranger's hair was shorn like a lad's dark poll

And pale her ivory face: her eyes would fail

In silence when she looked: for all the whole

Darkness of failure was in them, without avail.

Dark in indomitable failure, she who had lost

Now claimed the host,

She softly passed the sorrowful flower shed

In blonde and white on the floor, nor even turned

Her head aside, but straight towards the bed

Moved with slow feet, and her eyes' flame steadily

burned.

She looked at him as he lay with banded cheek,

And she started to speak

Softly: "I knew it would come to this," she said,

"I knew that some day, soon, I should find you thus.

So I did not fight you. You went your way instead

Of coming mine--and of the two of us

I died the first, I, in the after-life

Am now your wife."

New Poems(#22726) · 第 44 / 50 题