Rottenheart

Act Four

She murmured, ‘Vain, in vain: it cannot be.

He will not love me: how then? must I die?’

Then as a little helpless innocent bird,

That has but one plain passage of few notes,

Will sing the simple passage o’er and o’er

For all an April morning, till the ear

Wearies to hear it, so the simple maid

Went half the night repeating, ‘Must I die?’

And now to right she turned, and now to left,

And found no ease in turning or in rest;

And ‘Him or death,’ she muttered, ‘death or him,’

Again and like a burthen, ‘Him or death.’

‘Lancelot and Elaine’, Alfred, Lord Tennyson