Dear as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more!

The dirty nurse, Experience, in her kind Hath fouled me.

She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces through the room, She saw the water-lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She look'd down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack'd from side to side; "The curse is come upon me," cried The Lady of Shalott.

Four grey walls, and four grey towers, Overlook a space of flowers, And the silent isle imbowers The Lady of Shalott.

And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

For every worm beneath the moon Draws different threads, and late and soon Spins, toiling out his own cocoon.

I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house, Wherein at ease for aye to dwell.