| Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916. | | | XXIX. The Happy Dead
‘Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes’ | | By Robert Browning (1812–1889) |
| | From ‘Paracelsus’
HEAP cassia, sandal-buds and stripes | |
| Of labdanum, and aloe-balls, | |
| Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes | |
| From out her hair: such balsam falls | |
| Down seaside mountain pedestals, | 5 |
| From tree-tops where tired winds are fain, | |
| Spent with the vast and howling main, | |
| To treasure half their island-gain. | |
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| And strew faint sweetness from some old | |
| Egyptian’s fine worm-eaten shroud | 10 |
| Which breaks to dust when once unrolled; | |
| Or shredded perfume, like a cloud | |
| From closet long to quiet vowed, | |
| With mothed and dropping arras hung, | |
| Mouldering her lute and books among, | 15 |
| As when a queen, long dead, was young. | | | | |
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