Long have I sigh'd for a calm: God grant I may find it at last! It will never be broken by Maud, she has neither savour nor salt, But a cold and clear-cut face, as I found when her carriage past, Perfectly beautiful: let it be granted her: where is the fault? All that I saw (for her eyes were downcast, not to be seen) Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, Dead perfection, no more; nothing more, if it had not been For a chance of travel, a paleness, an hour's defect of the rose, Or an underlip, you may call it a little too ripe, too full, Or the least little delicate aquiline curve in a sensitive nose, From which I escaped heart-free, with the least little touch of spleen. III. Cold and clear-cut face, why come you so cruelly meek, Breaking a slumber in which all spleenful folly was drown'd, Pale with the golden beam of an eyelash dead on the cheek, Passionless, pale, cold face, star-sweet on a gloom profound; Womanlike, taking revenge too deep for a transient wrong Done but in thought to your beauty, and ever as pale as before Growing and fading and growing upon me without a sound. Luminous, gemlike, ghostlike, deathlike, half the night long Growing and fading and growing, till I could bear it no more. But arose, and all by myself in my own dark garden ground, Listening now to the tide in its broad-flung shipwrecking roar, Now to the scream of a madden'd beach dragg'd down by the wave, Walk'd in a wintry wind by a ghastly glimmer, and found The shining daffodil dead, and Orion low in his grave. IV. 1. A million emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime In the little grove where I sit--ah, wherefore cannot I be Like things of the season gay, like the bountiful season bland, When the far-off sail is blown by the breeze of a softer clime, Half-lost in the liquid azure bloom of a crescent of sea. The silent sapphire-spangled marriage ring of the land? 2. Below me, there, is the village, and looks how quiet and small! And yet bubbles o'er like a city, with gossip, scandal, and spite; And Jack on his ale-house bench has as many lies as a Czar; And here on the landward side, by a red rock, glimmers the Hall; And up in the high Hall-garden I see her pass like a light; But sorrow seize me if ever that light be my leading star! 3. When have I bow'd to her father, the wrinkled head of the race? I met her to-day with her brother, but not to her brother I bow'd; I bow'd to his lady-sister as she rode by on the moor; But the fire of a foolish pride flash'd over her beautiful face. O child, you wrong your beauty, believe it, in being so proud; Your father has wealth well-gotten, and I am nameless and poor.