“Oh! bitter destiny! Oh! dire necessity! Must I pronounce your doom? Consign you to the tomb? “Alas! my Yang Kuei-fei, I’m powerless to save! My life—throne—empire—all I’d give Had I the power to bid you live— To snatch you from the grave. Yet they have willed it thus—and I Who’d die to save you, bid you die.” “See I am calm,—it is not death I fear, It is their savage mode of death I dread; Say could you bear to see me lying here, Weltering in blood, by ruthless butchers shed? “Fancy their bloody hands wreathed in my hair— That silken hair you used so much to prize; Dragged—struck—faint—bleeding!—could you bear To see all this before your very eyes? “Pierced by a hundred knives, my life-blood flows In purple streams—could you look on and see, Unmoved—my murderers watch my dying throes— With hungry eyes gloat on my agony? “I have been vile, but let my penitence In these last moments that to me are given, Make some atonement for my great offence, And Oh! ‘forgive me as you’d be forgiven!’ “One last entreaty—let me die alone— Let no one enter—none but you stand by To watch my death;—the act, too, be my own; Let not the ignoble rabble see me die. “The means are here; I have but to unloose This silken girdle from my slender waist; I knot it thus, and thus, and form a noose, This by my own hand round my neck is placed. “With my own hands the ends are tightly drawn, And I die thus”—scarce had the words been said— A few brief struggles, and Yang-fei had gone “With all her inperfections on her head.” “Hide her from my sight! Let me not see That face so ghastly white— Those eyes so wildly bright Glaring at me! “They follow mine everywhere, Look where I may— On the earth—in the air, Still the same glassy stare. Take them away! “Place her gently in the grave E’en as she fell; Here, where the willows wave, Near this old well. “Lightly cover her with earth— Oh! Yang Kuei-fei! What is all my empire worth Now I’ve lost thee!”