Done was the deed that could not be undone Throughout eternity. O silent tongue That would blab all with silence! What to do? How hide this speechless witness from men's gaze? Living, that body vexed us; being dead 'T is like to give us trouble and to spare. O for a cavern in deep-bowelled earth! Quick, ere the dusky petals of the night Unclosing bare the fiery heart of dawn And thus undo us with its garish light, Let us this mute and pale accusing clay In some undreamed-of sepulchre bestow, But where? Hold back thy fleet-wing'd coursers, Time, Whilst we bethink us! Ah--such place there is! Close, too, at hand--a place wherein a man Might lie till doomsday safer from the touch Of prying clown than is the spiced dust Of an Egyptian in his pyramid. At a dark alcove's end of that long hall, The ancient armor-room in the east wing, A certain door (whereof no mortal knew save Wyndham, now that other lay a-cold) Was to the panels of the wall so set, And with such devilish shrewdness overlaid By carvings of wild-flower and curled grape-leaf, That one not in the favor of the trick, Albeit he knew such mechanism was, Ere he put finger on the secret spring Had need of Job for ancestor, in faith! You pressed a rose, a least suspected rose, And two doors turned on hinge, the inner door Closing a space of say some six feet square, Unlighted, sheathed with iron. Doubtless here The mediaeval Wyndhams hid their plate When things looked wicked from the outer wall, Or, on occasion, a grim ruthless lord Immured some inconvenient two-faced friend-- To banquet bidden, and kept over night. Such pranks were played in Merrie England then. Sealed in the narrow compass of that cell, Shut from God's light and his most precious air, A man might have of life a half-hour's lease If he were hale and well-breathed at the start.