So with his brow he touched her feet, and bent The farewell of fond eyes, unutterable, Upon her sleeping face, still wet with tears; And thrice around the bed in reverence, As though it were an altar, softly stepped With clasped hands laid upon his beating heart, "For never," spake he, "lie I there again!" And thrice he made to go, but thrice came back, So strong her beauty was, so large his love Then, o'er his head drawing his cloth, he turned And raised the purdah's edge. There drooped, close-hushed, In such sealed sleep as water-lilies know, The lovely garden of his Indian girls; Those twin dark-petalled lotus-buds of all-- Gunga and Gotami--on either side, And those, their silk-leaved sisterhood, beyond. "Pleasant ye are to me, sweet friends!" he said, "And dear to leave; yet if I leave ye not What else will come to all of us save eld Without assuage and death without avail? Lo! as ye lie asleep so must ye lie A-dead; and when the rose dies where are gone Its scent and splendour? when the lamp is drained Whither is fled the flame? Press heavy, Night! Upon their down-dropped lids and seal their lips, That no tear stay me and no faithful voice. For all the brighter that these made my life, The bitterer it is that they and I, And all, should live as trees do--so much spring, Such and such rains and frosts, such wintertimes, And then dead leaves, with maybe spring again, Or axe-stroke at the root. This will not I, Whose life here was a god's!--this would not I, Though all my days were godlike, while men moan Under their darkness. Therefore farewell, friends! While life is good to give, I give, and go To seek deliverance and that unknown Light!"