Explore "The Beloved" by Frederic Manning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
TO THE COUNTESS OF KINTORE
Love, when they told me you were dead, I replied not; / I smiled, and they thought me mad.
They wept anointing thy body, they swathed thee in linen bands / and laid thee in the earth.
Their hands touched thee as a thing sacred, they mourned for thee / with shaken hearts.
It was dawn, my beloved, and they came in, into my room, where I lay / close to sleep smiling, and they told me you were dead.
I smiled hearing the swallows coming and going under the eaves, / and they told me you were dead.
The earth dreamed in dews, the sheep were in the pastures, / and they told me you were dead.
O my beloved, these knew thee not.