They found Ginevra dead! if it be death _145 To lie without motion, or pulse, or breath, With waxen cheeks, and limbs cold, stiff, and white, And open eyes, whose fixed and glassy light Mocked at the speculation they had owned. If it be death, when there is felt around _150 A smell of clay, a pale and icy glare, And silence, and a sense that lifts the hair From the scalp to the ankles, as it were Corruption from the spirit passing forth, And giving all it shrouded to the earth, _155 And leaving as swift lightning in its flight Ashes, and smoke, and darkness: in our night Of thought we know thus much of death,--no more Than the unborn dream of our life before Their barks are wrecked on its inhospitable shore. _160 The marriage feast and its solemnity Was turned to funeral pomp--the company, With heavy hearts and looks, broke up; nor they Who loved the dead went weeping on their way Alone, but sorrow mixed with sad surprise _165 Loosened the springs of pity in all eyes, On which that form, whose fate they weep in vain, Will never, thought they, kindle smiles again. The lamps which, half extinguished in their haste, Gleamed few and faint o'er the abandoned feast, _170 Showed as it were within the vaulted room A cloud of sorrow hanging, as if gloom Had passed out of men's minds into the air. Some few yet stood around Gherardi there, Friends and relations of the dead,--and he, _175 A loveless man, accepted torpidly The consolation that he wanted not; Awe in the place of grief within him wrought. Their whispers made the solemn silence seem More still--some wept,... _180 Some melted into tears without a sob, And some with hearts that might be heard to throb Leaned on the table and at intervals Shuddered to hear through the deserted halls And corridors the thrilling shrieks which came _185 Upon the breeze of night, that shook the flame Of every torch and taper as it swept From out the chamber where the women kept;-- Their tears fell on the dear companion cold Of pleasures now departed; then was knolled _190 The bell of death, and soon the priests arrived, And finding Death their penitent had shrived, Returned like ravens from a corpse whereon A vulture has just feasted to the bone. And then the mourning women came.-- _195 ... THE DIRGE. Old winter was gone In his weakness back to the mountains hoar, And the spring came down From the planet that hovers upon the shore Where the sea of sunlight encroaches _200 On the limits of wintry night;-- If the land, and the air, and the sea, Rejoice not when spring approaches, We did not rejoice in thee, Ginevra! _205