A slow and solemn hour swept by, And there, all still and motionless, With rigid limb and stony eye, The widow knelt in her distress. With pitying looks the swarthy crew Around the tearless mourner drew, And trembling strove to force away From her chill arms the senseless clay. Slowly she raised her awful head; A slight convulsion stirr'd her face; Close to her heart she snatched the dead, And held him in a strong embrace; Then drawing o'er his brow her veil, She turned her face as strangely wild, As if a fiend had mocked her wail, Parted her marble lips and smiled. Twice she essayed to speak, and then Her face drooped o'er the corpse again, While forth from the disshevelled hair A husky whisper stirred the air. 'Nay, bury him not here,' it said, 'I would have prayers above my dead;' Then, one by one, the timid crew, From the infected barge withdrew: Helmsmen and servants, all were gone; The wife was with her dead alone. With no propelling arm to guide, The barque turned slowly with the tide, And on the heavy current swept Its slow, funereal pathway back, Where the expiring sunbeams slept, Like gold along its morning track. The day threw out its dying gleam, Imbuing with its tints the stream, As if the mighty river rolled O'er beds of ruby--sands of gold. As if some seraph just had hung In the blue west his coronet, The timid moon came out and flung Her pearly smiles about--then set, As if she feared the stars would dim The silvery brightness of her rim; Then in the blue and deepening skies The stars sprang out, like glowing eyes, And on the stream reflected lay, Like ingots down the watery way; And softly streamed the starry light Down to the wet and gloomy trees, Where fiery flies were flashing bright, Afloat upon the evening breeze, Or like some fairy, tiny lamp, Glow'd out among the stirring leaves, And down among the rushes damp, Where Pestilence her vapor weaves, Till shrub and reed, and slender stems, Seemed drooping with a shower of gems. The Widow raised her head once more, Turned her still look upon the sky, The lighted stream and broken shore; Oh, God! it was a mockery, --The bridegroom--Death--upon her breast For aye possessing and possessed! With the deep calmness of despair, The mourner raised his marble head, And on the silken cushions there, With icy hands, composed the dead; Then tore her veil off for a shroud, And in her voiceless mourning bowed.