I turning saw, throned on a flowery rise, One sitting on a crimson scarf unroll’d; A queen, with swarthy cheeks[16] and bold black eyes, Brow-bound with burning gold. She, flashing forth a haughty smile, began: “I govern’d men by change, and so I sway’d All moods. Tis long since I have seen a man. Once, like the moon, I made “The ever-shifting currents of the blood According to my humour ebb and flow. I have no men to govern in this wood: That makes my only woe. “Nay—yet it chafes me that I could not bend One will; nor tame and tutor with mine eye That dull cold-blooded Caesar. Prythee, friend, Where is Mark Antony?[17] “The man, my lover, with whom I rode sublime On Fortune’s neck: we sat as God by God: The Nilus would have risen before his time And flooded at our nod.[18] “We drank the Libyan[19] Sun to sleep, and lit Lamps which outburn’d Canopus. O my life In Egypt! O the dalliance and the wit, The flattery and the strife,[20] “And the wild kiss, when fresh from war’s alarms,[21] My Hercules, my Roman Antony, My mailèd Bacchus leapt into my arms, Contented there to die! “And there he died: and when I heard my name Sigh’d forth with life, I would not brook my fear[22] Of the other: with a worm I balk’d his fame. What else was left? look here!” (With that she tore her robe apart, and half The polish’d argent of her breast to sight Laid bare. Thereto she pointed with a laugh, Showing the aspick’s bite.) “I died a Queen. The Roman soldier found[23] Me lying dead, my crown about my brows, A name for ever!—lying robed and crown’d, Worthy a Roman spouse.” Her warbling voice, a lyre of widest range Struck[24] by all passion, did fall down and glance From tone to tone, and glided thro’ all change Of liveliest utterance. When she made pause I knew not for delight; Because with sudden motion from the ground She raised her piercing orbs, and fill’d with light The interval of sound. Still with their fires Love tipt his keenest darts; As once they drew into two burning rings All beams of Love, melting the mighty hearts Of captains and of kings. Slowly my sense undazzled. Then I heard A noise of some one coming thro’ the lawn, And singing clearer than the crested bird, That claps his wings at dawn. “The torrent brooks of hallow’d Israel From craggy hollows pouring, late and soon, Sound all night long, in falling thro’ the dell, Far-heard beneath the moon. “The balmy moon of blessed Israel Floods all the deep-blue gloom with beams divine: All night the splinter’d crags that wall the dell With spires of silver shine.” As one that museth where broad sunshine laves The lawn by some cathedral, thro’ the door Hearing the holy organ rolling waves Of sound on roof and floor, Within, and anthem sung, is charm’d and tied To where he stands,—so stood I, when that flow Of music left the lips of her that died To save her father’s vow;