Therefore they watch'd a time when they might sift This hidden whim; and long they watch'd in vain; For seldom did she go to chapel-shrift, And seldom felt she any hunger-pain; And when she left, she hurried back, as swift As bird on wing to breast its eggs again; 470 And, patient, as a hen-bird, sat her there Beside her Basil, weeping through her hair. LX. Yet they contriv'd to steal the Basil-pot, And to examine it in secret place: The thing was vile with green and livid spot, And yet they knew it was Lorenzo's face: The guerdon of their murder they had got, And so left Florence in a moment's space, Never to turn again.--Away they went, With blood upon their heads, to banishment. 480 LXI. O Melancholy, turn thine eyes away! O Music, Music, breathe despondingly! O Echo, Echo, on some other day, From isles Lethean, sigh to us--O sigh! Spirits of grief, sing not your "Well-a-way!" For Isabel, sweet Isabel, will die; Will die a death too lone and incomplete, Now they have ta'en away her Basil sweet. LXII. Piteous she look'd on dead and senseless things, Asking for her lost Basil amorously; 490 And with melodious chuckle in the strings Of her lorn voice, she oftentimes would cry After the Pilgrim in his wanderings, To ask him where her Basil was; and why 'Twas hid from her: "For cruel 'tis," said she, "To steal my Basil-pot away from me." LXIII. And so she pined, and so she died forlorn, Imploring for her Basil to the last. No heart was there in Florence but did mourn In pity of her love, so overcast. 500 And a sad ditty of this story born From mouth to mouth through all the country pass'd: Still is the burthen sung--"O cruelty, To steal my Basil-pot away from me!" THE EVE OF ST. AGNES. I. St. Agnes' Eve--Ah, bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the flock in woolly fold: Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told His rosary, and while his frosted breath, Like pious incense from a censer old, Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death, Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith. II. His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man; 10 Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees, And back returneth, meagre, barefoot, wan, Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees: The sculptur'd dead, on each side, seem to freeze, Emprison'd in black, purgatorial rails: Knights, ladies, praying in dumb orat'ries, He passeth by; and his weak spirit fails To think how they may ache in icy hoods and mails. III.