One only heart was pierced with grief unfeigned, Oenone. Not with them of Troy she wailed, But far away within that desolate home Moaning she lay on her lost husband's bed. As when the copses on high mountains stand White-veiled with frozen snow, which o'er the glens The west-wind blasts have strown, but now the sun And east-wind melt it fast, and the long heights With water-courses stream, and down the glades Slide, as they thaw, the heavy sheets, to swell The rushing waters of an ice-cold spring, So melted she in tears of anguished pain, And for her own, her husband, agonised, And cried to her heart with miserable moans: "Woe for my wickedness! O hateful life! I loved mine hapless husband--dreamed with him To pace to eld's bright threshold hand in hand, And heart in heart! The gods ordained not so. Oh had the black Fates snatched me from the earth Ere I from Paris turned away in hate! My living love hath left me!--yet will I Dare to die with him, for I loathe the light." So cried she, weeping, weeping piteously, Remembering him whom death had swallowed up, Wasting, as melteth wax before the flame Yet secretly, being fearful lest her sire Should mark it, or her handmaids till the night Rose from broad Ocean, flooding all the earth With darkness bringing men release from toil. Then, while her father and her maidens slept, She slid the bolts back of the outer doors, And rushed forth like a storm-blast. Fast she ran, As when a heifer 'mid the mountains speeds, Her heart with passion stung, to meet her mate, And madly races on with flying feet, And fears not, in her frenzy of desire, The herdman, as her wild rush bears her on, So she but find her mate amid the woods; So down the long tracks flew Oenone's feet; Seeking the awful pyre, to leap thereon. No weariness she knew: as upon wings Her feet flew faster ever, onward spurred By fell Fate, and the Cyprian Queen. She feared No shaggy beast that met her in the dark Who erst had feared them sorely--rugged rock And precipice of tangled mountain-slope, She trod them all unstumbling; torrent-beds She leapt. The white Moon-goddess from on high Looked on her, and remembered her own love, Princely Endymion, and she pitied her In that wild race, and, shining overhead In her full brightness, made the long tracks plain.