Down to the diamond--is not metal there, When o'er the sudden speck my chisel trips? --Not flesh, as flake off flake I scale, approach, Lay bare those bluish veins of blood asleep? Lurks flame in no strange windings where, surprised 110 By the swift implement sent home at once, Flushes and glowings radiate and hover About its track? Phene? what--why is this? That whitening cheek, those still dilating eyes! Ah, you will die--I knew that you would die! 115 PHENE _begins, on his having long remained silent._ Now the end's coming; to be sure, it must Have ended sometime! Tush, why need I speak Their foolish speech? I cannot bring to mind One half of it, beside; and do not care For old Natalia now, nor any of them. 120 Oh, you--what are you?--if I do not try To say the words Natalia made me learn; To please your friends--it is to keep myself Where your voice lifted me, by letting that Proceed; but can it? Even you, perhaps, 125 Cannot take up, now you have once let fall, The music's life, and me along with that-- No, or you would! We'll stay, then, as we are-- Above the world. You creature with the eyes! If I could look forever up to them, 130 As now you let me--I believe all sin, All memory of wrong done, suffering borne, Would drop down, low and lower, to the earth Whence all that's low comes, and there touch and stay --Never to overtake the rest of me, 135 All that, unspotted, reaches up to you, Drawn by those eyes! What rises is myself, Not me the shame and suffering; but they sink, Are left, I rise above them. Keep me so, Above the world! 140 But you sink, for your eyes Are altering--altered! Stay--"I love you, love"-- I could prevent it if I understood: More of your words to me; was 't in the tone Or the words, your power? Or stay--I will repeat Their speech, if that contents you! Only change 145 No more, and I shall find it presently Far back here, in the brain yourself filled up. Natalia threatened me that harm should follow Unless I spoke their lesson to the end, But harm to me, I thought she meant, not you. 150 Your friends--Natalia said they were your friends And meant you well--because, I doubted it, Observing (what was very strange to see) On every face, so different in all else, The same smile girls like me are used to bear, 155 But never men, men cannot stoop so low; Yet your friends, speaking of you, used that smile, That hateful smirk of boundless self-conceit Which seems to take possession of the world