SEVENTH OPAL

You say these jewels were accurst —

With evil omen fraught.

You should have known it from the first!

This was the truth they taught:

No treasured thing in heaven or earth

Holds potency more weird

Than our hearts hold, that throb from birth

With wavering flames insphered.

And when from me the gems you took,

On that strange April day,

My nature, too, I gave, that shook

With passion's fateful play.

The mingled fate my love should give

In these mute emblems shone,

That more intensely burn and live —

While I am turned to stone.

Listen now to what is said

By the eighth opal, flashing red

And pale, by turns, with every breath —

The voice of the lover after death.