"How know I, being blind, I am on Earth? I am in Hell, in Hell, oh Love! I feel There is a burning gulf before my feet! I dare not stir and at my back the fiends! I wind my arms, my arms that demons scorch, Round this poor breast and all that thou shouldst save, From rapine. Husband, I cry out from Hell; There is a gulf. They seize my flesh. (She shrieked.) "I will sink down here where I stand. All round How know I but the burning pit doth yawn? Here will I shrink and shrink to no more space Than my feet cover. (She wept.) So much up My mortal touch makes honest. Oh my Life, My Lord, my Husband! Fool, that cryest in vain! Ah, Angel! What hast thou to do with Hell? "And yet I do not ask thee, oh my Love, To lead me to thee where thou art in Heaven Only I would that thou shouldst be my star, And whatsoever Fate thy beams dispense I am content. It shall be good to me. "But tho' I may not see thee, oh my Love, Yea tho' mine eyes return and miss thee still, And thou shouldst take another shape than thine, Have pity on my lot, and lead me hence Where I may think of thee. To the old fields And wonted valleys where we once were blest. Oh Love all day I hear them, out of sight, This far Home where the Past abideth yet Beside the stream that prates of other days. "My punishment is more than I can bear. My sorrow groweth big unto my time. Oh Love, I would that I were mad. Oh Love, I do not ask that thou shouldst change my Fate, I will endure; but oh my Life, my Lord, Being as thou art a throned saint in Heaven, If thou wouldst touch me and enchant my sense, And daze the anguish of my heart with dreams, And change the stop of grief; and turn my soul A little devious from the daily march Of Reason, and the path of conscious woe And all the truth of Life! Better, oh Love, In fond delusion to be twice betrayed, Than know so well and bitterly as I. Let me be mad. (She wept upon her knees.) "I will arise and seek thee. This is Heaven. I sat upon a cloud. It bore me in. It is not so, you heavens! I am not dead. Alas! There have been pangs as strong as Death. It would be sweet to know that I am dead. "Even now I feel I am not of this world Which sayeth day and night, 'For all but thee,' And poureth its abundance night and day, And will not feed the hunger in my heart. "I tread upon a dream, myself a dream, I can not write my Being on the world, The moss grows unrespective where I tread. "I can not lift mine eyes to the sunshine, Night is not for my slumber. Not for me Sink down the dark inexorable hours. "I would not keep or change the weary day; I have no pleasure in the needless night And toss and wail that other lids may sleep.