Hereat she laid one palm against her lips To stop their trembling; as when water slips Out of a beak-mouthed vessel with faint noise And chuckles in the narrowed throat and cloys The carven rims with murmuring, so came Words in her lips with no word right of them, A beaten speech thick and disconsolate, Till his smile ceasing waxed compassionate Of her sore fear that grew from anything-- The sound of the strong summer thickening In heated leaves of the smooth apple-trees: The day's breath felt about the ash-branches, And noises of the noon whose weight still grew On the hot heavy-headed flowers, and drew Their red mouths open till the rose-heart ached; For eastward all the crowding rose was slaked And soothed with shade: but westward all its growth Seemed to breathe hard with heat as a man doth Who feels his temples newly feverous. And even with such motion in her brows As that man hath in whom sick days begin, She turned her throat and spake, her voice being thin As a sick man's, sudden and tremulous; "Sweet, if this end be come indeed on us, Let us love more;" and held his mouth with hers. As the first sound of flooded hill-waters Is heard by people of the meadow-grass, Or ever a wandering waif of ruin pass With whirling stones and foam of the brown stream Flaked with fierce yellow: so beholding him She felt before tears came her eyelids wet, Saw the face deadly thin where life was yet, Heard his throat's harsh last moan before it clomb: And he, with close mouth passionate and dumb, Burned at her lips: so lay they without speech, Each grasping other, and the eyes of each Fed in the other's face: till suddenly He cried out with a little broken cry This word, "O help me, sweet, I am but dead." And even so saying, the colour of fair red Was gone out of his face, and his blood's beat Fell, and stark death made sharp his upward feet And pointed hands; and without moan he died. Pain smote her sudden in the brows and side, Strained her lips open and made burn her eyes: For the pure sharpness of her miseries She had no heart's pain, but mere body's wrack; But at the last her beaten blood drew back Slowly upon her face, and her stunned brows Suddenly grown aware and piteous Gathered themselves, her eyes shone, her hard breath Came as though one nigh dead came back from death; Her lips throbbed, and life trembled through her hair. And in brief while she thought to bury there The dead man that her love might lie with him In a sweet bed under the rose-roots dim And soft earth round the branchèd apple-trees, Full of hushed heat and heavy with great ease, And no man entering divide him thence. Wherefore she bade one of her handmaidens To be her help to do upon this wise. And saying so the tears out of her eyes Fell without noise and comforted her heart: Yea, her great pain eased of the sorest part