Stiff as a viper frozen; loathsome sight, How from the rosy lips of life and love, Flash'd the bare-grinning skeleton of death!

White was her cheek; sharp breaths of anger puff'd

Her fairy nostril out; her hand halfclench'd

Went faltering sideways downward to her belt,

And feeling; had she found a dagger there

(For in a wink the false love turns to hate)

She would have stabb'd him; but she found it not:

His eye was calm, and suddenly she took
To bitter weeping like a beaten child,
A long, long weeping, not consolable.
Then her false voice made way, broken
with sobs:

'O crueller than was ever told in tale, Or sung in song! O vainly lavish'd love! O cruel, there was nothing wild or strange,

She mused a little, and then clapt her hands

Together with a wailing shriek, and said: 'Stabb'd through the heart's affections to the heart!

Seethed like the kid in its own mother's milk!

Kill'd with a word worse than a life of blows!

I thought that he was gentle, being great. O God, that I had loved a smaller man! I should have found in him a greater heart.

O, I, that flattering my true passion, saw The knights, the court, the King, dark in your light,

Who loved to make men darker than they

(For now the storm was close above them) struck,

Furrowing a giant oak, and javelining With darted spikes and splinters of the wood

The dark earth round. He raised his eyes and saw

The tree that shone white listed thro' the gloom.

But Vivien, fearing heaven had heard her oath,

And dazzled by the livid-flickering fork, And deafen'd with the stammering cracks and claps

That follow'd, flying back and crying out, 'O Merlin, tho' you do not love me, save, Yet save me!' clung to him and hugg'd