“Dear father, if a moth shall sometime fly About your lamp at night, that will be I. But see! the Saints are standing on the prow! They wait. I’m coming in a moment now! Slowly I move, good Saints, for I am ailing.” “It is too much!” the mother brake out, wailing. “Oh, stay with me! I cannot let you die. And, when you’re well, Mirèio, by and by We’ll go some day to Aunt Aurano’s, dear, And carry pomegranates. Do you hear? Maiano is not distant from our home; And, in one day, one may both go and come.” “Not very distant, mother,--that I know; But all alone thou wilt the journey go! Now give me my white raiment, mother mine. Oh, how the mantles of the Maries shine! Sawest thou ever such a dazzling sight? The snow upon the hillsides is less white!” “O thou,” cried the dark weaver, “who didst ope The palace of thy love to me, my hope, My queen, my all! A blossoming alms thou gavest; The mire of my low life in thine thou lavest, Till it shines like a mirror, and dost place Me in eternal honour by thy grace. “Pearl of Provence! of my young days the sun! Shall it be ever said of such an one, I saw upon her forehead the death-dew? Shall it be said, puissant Saints, of you, You looked unmoved upon her mortal pain, Letting her clasp your sacred sill in vain?” Slowly the maiden answered, “My poor friend, What is it doth affright you, and offend? Believe me, dear, the thing that we call death Is a delusion. Lo! it vanisheth, As a fog when the bells begin their pealing; As dreams with daylight through the window stealing. “I am not dying! See, I mount the boat With a light foot! And now we are afloat! Good-by! good-by! We are drifting out to sea. The waves encompass us, and needs must be The very avenue to Paradise, For all around they touch the azure skies! “Gently they rock us now. And overhead So many stars are shining! Ah,” she said, “Among those worlds one surely may be found Where two may love in peace! Hark, Saints, that sound! Is it an organ played across the deep?” Then sighed, and fell, as it had been, asleep. And, by her smiling lips, you might have guessed That yet she spake. Only the Santen pressed About the sleeper in a mournful band, And, with a taper passed from hand to hand, Signed the cross o’er her. While, as turned to stone, The parents gazed on what themselves had done. To them her form is all enrayed with light. Vainly they feel her cold, they see her white: The awful stroke they comprehend not now. But, soon as Vincen marked the level brow, The rigid arms, the sweet eyes wholly veiled, “See you not she is dead?” he loudly wailed.