"O simple child! what may the forest flames
"See in the woodland ponds but their own fires?
"And have you, Katie, neither fears nor doubts?"
She, with the flow'r soft pinkness of her palm
Cover'd her sudden tears, then quickly said:
"Fears--never doubts, for true love never doubts."
Then Alfred paus'd a space, as one who holds
A white doe by the throat and searches for
The blade to slay her. "This your answer still--
"You doubt not--doubt not this far love of yours,
"Tho' sworn a false young recreant, Kate, by me?"
"He is as true as I am," Katie said;
"And did I seek for stronger simile,
"I could not find such in the universe!"
"And were he dead? what, Katie, were he dead--
"A handful of brown dust, a flame blown out--
"What then would love be strongly, true to--Naught?"
"Still, true to love my love would be," she said,
And faintly smiling, pointed to the stars.
"O fool!" said Alfred, stirr'd--as craters rock
"To their own throes--and over his pale lips
Roll'd flaming stone, his molten heart. "Then, fool--
"Be true to what thou wilt--for he is dead.
"And there have grown this gilded summer past
"Grasses and buds from his unburied flesh.
"I saw him dead. I heard his last, loud cry:
"'O Kate!' ring thro' the woods; in truth I did."
She half-raised up a piteous, pleading hand,
Then fell along the mosses at his feet.
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