Isolt of the White Hands

Yet there she gazed
Across the water, over the white waves,
Upon a castle that she had never seen,
And could not see, save as a phantom shape
Against a phantom sky.

He had been all,
And would be always all there was for her,
And he had not come back to her alive,
Not even to go again. It was like that
For women, sometimes, and might be so too often
For women like her. She hoped there were not
many
Of them, or many of them to be, now knowing
More about that than about waves and foam,
And white birds everywhere, flying and flying;
Alone, with her white face and her gray eyes,
She watched them there till even her thoughts
were white,
And there was nothing alive but white birds
flying,
Flying, and always flying, and still flying,
And the white sunlight flashing on the sea.