And washing seven times in the ‘People’s Baths’ Were sovereign for a people’s leprosy,— Still leaving out the essential prophet’s word That comes in power. On which, we thunder down, We prophets, poets,—Virtue’s in the _word_! The maker burnt the darkness up with His, To inaugurate the use of vocal life; And, plant a poet’s word even, deep enough In any man’s breast, looking presently For offshoots, you have done more for the man, Than if you dressed him in a broad-cloth coat And warmed his Sunday potage at your fire. Yet Romney leaves me.... God! what face is that? O Romney, O Marian! Walking on the quays And pulling thoughts to pieces leisurely, As if I caught at grasses in a field, And bit them slow between my absent lips, And shred them with my hands.... What face is that? What a face, what a look, what a likeness! Full on mine The sudden blow of it came down, till all My blood swam, my eyes dazzled. Then I sprang— It was as if a meditative man Were dreaming out a summer afternoon And watching gnats a-prick upon a pond, When something floats up suddenly, out there, Turns over ... a dead face, known once alive— So old, so new! It would be dreadful now To lose the sight and keep the doubt of this. He plunges—ha! he has lost it in the splash. I plunged—I tore the crowd up, either side, And rushed on,—forward, forward ... after her. Her? whom? A woman sauntered slow, in front, Munching an apple,—she left off amazed As if I had snatched it: that’s not she, at least. A man walked arm-linked with a lady veiled, Both heads dropped closer than the need of talk: They started; he forgot her with his face, And she, herself,—and clung to him as if My look were fatal. Such a stream of folk, And all with cares and business of their own! I ran the whole quay down against their eyes; No Marian; nowhere Marian. Almost, now, I could call Marian, Marian, with the shriek Of desperate creatures calling for the Dead. Where is she, was she? was she anywhere? I stood still, breathless, gazing, straining out In every uncertain distance, till, at last, A gentleman abstracted as myself Came full against me, then resolved the clash In voluble excuses,—obviously Some learned member of the Institute Upon his way there, walking, for his health, While meditating on the last ‘Discourse;’ Pinching the empty air ’twixt finger and thumb, From which the snuff being ousted by that shock, Defiled his snow-white waistcoat, duly pricked At the button-hole with honourable red; ‘Madame, your pardon,’—there, he swerved from me A metre, as confounded as he had heard That Dumas would be chosen to fill up