She lifted the lock of gleaming hair, And smote the lips and left it there. “Here’s gold that Hell shall take for thy toll! Full well hath thy treason found its goal, O thou dead body and damned soul!” Anything finer than this it would be hard to discover in English narrative poetry. Every word goes to build up the story: every line is quintessential: every flash of thought helps to heighten the emotion. Indeed the closing lines rise entirely above the limits of ballad poetry into the realm of dramatic diction. But perhaps the crowning glory and epic grandeur of the poem comes at the close. Awakened from her swoon, Rose Mary makes her way to the altar-cell and there she sees the beryl-stone lying between the wings of some sculptured beast. Within the fated glass she beholds Death, Sorrow, Sin and Shame marshalled past in the glare of a writhing flame, and thereupon follows a scene scarcely less terrible than Juliet’s vision of the tomb of the Capulets. But she has been told within this hour that her weak hand shall send hence the evil race by whom the stone is possessed, and with a stern purpose she reaches her father’s dinted sword. Then when the beryl is cleft to the core, and Rose Mary lies in her last gracious sleep-- With a cold brow like the snows ere May, With a cold breast like the earth till spring, With such a smile as the June days bring-- A clear voice pronounces her beatitude: Already thy heart remembereth No more his name thou sought’st in death: For under all deeps, all heights above,-- So wide the gulf in the midst thereof,-- Are Hell of Treason and Heaven of Love. Thee, true soul, shall thy truth prefer To blessed Mary’s rose-bower: Warmed and lit is thy place afar With guerdon-fires of the sweet love-star, Where hearts of steadfast lovers are.