For many months had Helen known This scene; and now she thither turned Her footsteps, not alone. The friend whose falsehood she had mourned, Sate with her on that seat of stone. _200 Silent they sate; for evening, And the power its glimpses bring Had, with one awful shadow, quelled The passion of their grief. They sate With linked hands, for unrepelled _205 Had Helen taken Rosalind's. Like the autumn wind, when it unbinds The tangled locks of the nightshade's hair, Which is twined in the sultry summer air Round the walls of an outworn sepulchre, _210 Did the voice of Helen, sad and sweet, And the sound of her heart that ever beat, As with sighs and words she breathed on her, Unbind the knots of her friend's despair, Till her thoughts were free to float and flow; _215 And from her labouring bosom now, Like the bursting of a prisoned flame, The voice of a long pent sorrow came. ROSALIND: I saw the dark earth fall upon The coffin; and I saw the stone _220 Laid over him whom this cold breast Had pillowed to his nightly rest! Thou knowest not, thou canst not know My agony. Oh! I could not weep: The sources whence such blessings flow _225 Were not to be approached by me! But I could smile, and I could sleep, Though with a self-accusing heart. In morning's light, in evening's gloom, I watched,--and would not thence depart-- _230 My husband's unlamented tomb. My children knew their sire was gone, But when I told them,--'He is dead,'-- They laughed aloud in frantic glee, They clapped their hands and leaped about, _235 Answering each other's ecstasy With many a prank and merry shout. But I sate silent and alone, Wrapped in the mock of mourning weed. They laughed, for he was dead: but I _240 Sate with a hard and tearless eye, And with a heart which would deny The secret joy it could not quell, Low muttering o'er his loathed name; Till from that self-contention came _245 Remorse where sin was none; a hell Which in pure spirits should not dwell.