Long as a flame of pale, arrested rage.-- For she had thought that, when they found him dead, His sword laid by him on the bloody bed Would be convictive that his own hand had Done him this violence when fever-mad. The sword she took; and to the chamber, where King Urience slept, she glided; like an air, Smooth in seductive sendal; or a fit Of faery song, a wicked charm in it, That slays; an incantation full of guile. She paused upon his threshold; for a while Listened; and, sure he slept, stole in and stood Crouched o'er his couch. About her heart the blood Caught, strangling; then rose throbbing, thud on thud, Up to her wide-stretched eyes, and up and up, As wine might, whirling wildly in a cup. Then came rare Recollection, with a mouth Sweet as the honeyed sunbeams of the South Trickling through perplexed ripples of the leaves; To whose faint form a veil of starshine cleaves Intricate gauze from memoried eyes to feet-- Feet softer than the sifted snows and fleet To come and go and airy anxiously. She, trembling to her, like a flower a bee Nests in and makes an audible mouth of musk, Lisping a downy message to the dusk, Laid lips to ears and languaged memories of Now hateful Urience:--How her maiden love Had left Caerleon secretly for Gore, With him, one day of autumn. How a boar, Wild as the wildness of the solitude, Raged at her from a cavern of the wood, That, crimson-creepered, yawned the bristling curse Murderous upon her. As her steed grew worse And, terrified, fled snorting down the dell, How she had flung herself from out the selle, In fear, upon a bank of springy moss, Where she lay swooning: in an utter loss Of mind and limbs; wherein she seemed to see, Or saw in horror, half unconsciously,-- As one who pants beneath an incubus And strives to shriek or move, delirious,-- The monster-thing thrust tow'rds her, tusked and fanged, And hideous snouted: how the whole wood clanged And buzzed and boomed a hundred sounds and lights Lawless about her brain,--like leaves wild nights Of hurricane harvest, shouting.--Then it seemed A fury thundered 'twixt them--and she screamed As round her flew th' uprooted loam that held Leaves, twigs and matted moss; and, clanging, swelled Continual echoes with the thud of strife, And groan of man and brute that warred for life: How all the air, gone mad with foam and forms, Spun froth and, 'twixt her, wrestled hair and arms, And hoofs and feet that crushed the leaves and shred, Whirling them wildly, brown, and yellow, and red. And how she rose and leaned her throbbing head, With all its uncoifed braids of raven hair Disheveled, on one arm,--as white and fair And smooth as milk,--and saw, as through a haze, The brute thing throttled and the frowning face