Hung round with ragged-rimmed burning folds, Embathing all with wild and woful hues-- Great hills of ruins, and collapsed masses Of thunder-shaken columns, indistinct And fused together in the tyrannous light. So gazed I on the ruins of that thought Which was the playmate of my youth--for which I lived and breathed: the dew, the sun, the rain, Unto the growth of body and of mind; The blood, the breath, the feeling and the motion, The slope into the current of my years, Which drove them onward--made them sensible; The precious jewel of my honour'd life, Erewhile close couch'd in golden happiness, Now proved counterfeit, was shaken out, And, trampled on, left to its own decay. The Lover's Tale Sometimes I thought Camilla was no more, Some one had told me she was dead, and ask'd me If I would see her burial: then I seem'd To rise, and thro' the forest-shadow borne With more than mortal swiftness, I ran down The sleepy sea-bank, till I came upon The rear of a procession, curving round The silver-sheeted bay: in front of which Six stately virgins, all in white, upbare A broad earth-sweeping pall of whitest lawn, Wreathed round the bier with garlands: in the distance, From out the yellow woods, upon the hill, Look'd forth the summit and the pinnacles Of a grey steeple. All the pageantry, Save those six virgins which upheld the bier, Were stoled from head to foot in flowing black; One walk'd abreast with me, and veiled his brow, And he was loud in weeping and in praise Of the departed: a strong sympathy Shook all my soul: I flung myself upon him In tears and cries: I told him all my love, How I had loved her from the first; whereat He shrunk and howl'd, and from his brow drew back His hand to push me from him; and the face The very face and form of Lionel, Flash'd through my eyes into my innermost brain, And at his feet I seemed to faint and fall, To fall and die away. I could not rise, Albeit I strove to follow. They pass'd on, The lordly Phantasms; in their floating folds They pass'd and were no more: but I had fall'n Prone by the dashing runnel on the grass.