The next week passed in silence, so the next, And several after: Romney did not come, Nor my aunt chide me. I lived on and on, As if my heart were kept beneath a glass, And everybody stood, all eyes and ears, To see and hear it tick. I could not sit, Nor walk, nor take a book, nor lay it down, Not sew on steadily, nor drop a stitch And a sigh with it, but I felt her looks Still cleaving to me, like the sucking asp To Cleopatra’s breast, persistently Through the intermittent pantings. Being observed, When observation is not sympathy, Is just being tortured. If she said a word, A ‘thank you,’ or an ‘if it please you, dear,’ She meant a commination, or, at best, An exorcism against the devildom Which plainly held me. So with all the house. Susannah could not stand and twist my hair, Without such glancing at the looking-glass To see my face there, that she missed the plait: And John,—I never sent my plate for soup, Or did not send it, but the foolish John Resolved the problem, ’twixt his napkined thumbs, Of what was signified by taking soup Or choosing mackerel. Neighbours, who dropped in On morning visits, feeling a joint wrong, Smiled admonition, sate uneasily, And talked with measured, emphasised reserve, Of parish news, like doctors to the sick, When not called in,—as if, with leave to speak, They might say something. Nay, the very dog Would watch me from his sun-patch on the floor, In alternation with the large black fly Not yet in reach of snapping. So I lived. A Roman died so; smeared with honey, teased By insects, stared to torture by the noon: And many patient souls ’neath English roofs Have died like Romans. I, in looking back, Wish only, now, I had borne the plague of all With meeker spirits than were rife in Rome. For, on the sixth week, the dead sea broke up, Dashed suddenly through beneath the heel of Him Who stands upon the sea and earth, and swears Time shall be nevermore. The clock struck nine That morning, too,—no lark was out of tune; The hidden farms among the hills, breathed straight Their smoke toward heaven; the lime-tree scarcely stirred Beneath the blue weight of the cloudless sky, Though still the July air came floating through The woodbine at my window, in and out, With touches of the out-door country-news For a bending forehead. There I sate, and wished That morning-truce of God would last till eve, Or longer. ‘Sleep,’ I thought, ‘late sleepers,—sleep, And spare me yet, the burden of your eyes.’