--I see no bowl of clear spring water. It ever stands before the dread Door where a dead man rests. --No lock of shorn hair! Every daughter Of woman shears it for the dead. No sound of bruisèd breasts! --Yet 'tis this very day ...--This very day? --The Queen should pass and lie beneath the clay. --It hurts my life, my heart!--All honest hearts Must sorrow for a brightness that departs, A good life worn away. LEADER. To wander o'er leagues of land, To search over wastes of sea, Where the Prophets of Lycia stand, Or where Ammon's daughters three Make runes in the rainless sand, For magic to make her free-- Ah, vain! for the end is here; Sudden it comes and sheer. What lamb on the altar-strand Stricken shall comfort me? SECOND ELDER. Only, only one, I know: Apollo's son was he, Who healed men long ago. Were he but on earth to see, She would rise from the dark below And the gates of eternity. For men whom the Gods had slain He pitied and raised again; Till God's fire laid him low, And now, what help have we? OTHERS. All's done that can be. Every vow Full paid; and every altar's brow Full crowned with spice of sacrifice. No help remains nor respite now. _Enter from the Castle a_ HANDMAID, _almost in tears._ LEADER. But see, a handmaid cometh, and the tear Wet on her cheek! What tiding shall we hear?... Thy grief is natural, daughter, if some ill Hath fallen to-day. Say, is she living still Or dead, your mistress? Speak, if speak you may. MAID. Alive. No, dead.... Oh, read it either way. LEADER. Nay, daughter, can the same soul live and die? MAID. Her life is broken; death is in her eye. LEADER. Poor King, to think what she was, and what thou! MAID. He never knew her worth.... He will know it now. LEADER. There is no hope, methinks, to save her still? MAID. The hour is come, and breaks all human will. LEADER. She hath such tendance as the dying crave? MAID. For sure: and rich robes ready for her grave. LEADER. 'Fore God, she dies high-hearted, aye, and far In honour raised above all wives that are!