Yet oft she turns from face to face, A keen and wistful gaze, As if the memory seeks to trace The sign of some lost dwelling-place Beloved in happier days;-- Ah, what the clue supplies In the cold vigil of a hireling's eyes? Ah, sad in childless age to weep alone, Look round and find no grief reflect our own!-- O Soul, thou speedest to thy rest away, But not upon the pinions of the dove; When death draws nigh, how miserable they Who have outlived all love! As on the solemn verge of Night Lingers a weary Moon, Thou wanest last of every glorious light That bathed with splendour thy majestic noon:-- The stately stars that clustering o'er the isle Lull'd into glittering rest the subject sea;-- Gone the great Masters of Italian wile, False to the world beside, but true to thee!-- Burleigh, the subtlest builder of thy fame,-- The serpent craft of winding Walsingham;-- They who exalted yet before thee bow'd: And that more dazzling chivalry--the Band That made thy Court a Faery Land, In which thou wert enshrined to reign alone-- The Gloriana of the Diamond Throne;-- All gone,--and left thee sad amidst the cloud. III. To their great sires, to whom thy youth was known, Who from thy smile, as laurels from the sun Drank the immortal greenness of renown, Succeeds the cold lip-homage scantly won From the new race whose hearts already bear The Wise-man's offerings to th' unworthy Heir. Watching the glass in which the sands run low,-- Hovers keen Cecil with his falcon eyes, And musing Bacon[F] bends his marble brow.-- But deem not fondly there To weep the fate or pour th' averting prayer Attend those solemn spies! Lo, at the Regal Gate The impatient couriers wait; To speed from hour to hour the nice account That registers the grudged unpitied sighs Vexing the friendless void, before The Stuart's step shall reeling mount Tudor's steep throne, red with his Mother's gore! IV. O piteous mockery of all pomp thou art, Poor Child of Clay, worn out with toil and years! As, layer by layer, the granite of the heart Dissolving, melteth to the weakest tears That ever Village Maiden shed above The grave that robb'd her quiet world of love. Ten days and nights upon that floor Those weary limbs have lain; And every hour has added more Of heaviness to pain. As gazing into dismal air She sees the headless phantom there, The victim round whose image twined The last wild love of womankind; That lightning flash'd from stormy hearts, Which now reveals the deeps of Heaven, And now remorseless, earthward darts, Rives, and expires on what its stroke hath riven!