“Meantime poor Thisbe fear’d, so long she stay’d, Her lover might suspect a perjured maid. Her fright scarce o’er, she strove the youth to find With ardent eyes, which spoke an ardent mind. Already in his arms, she hears him sigh At her destruction, which was once so nigh. The tomb, the tree, but not the fruit, she knew. The fruit she doubted for its alter’d hue. Still as she doubts, her eyes a body found, Quivering in death, and gasping on the ground. She started back, the red her cheeks forsook, And every nerve with thrilling horrors shook. So trembles the smooth surface of the seas, If brush’d o’er gently with a rising breeze. But when her view her bleeding love confess’d, She shriek’d, she tore her hair, she beat her breast. She raised the body, and embraced it round, And bathed with tears unfeign’d the gaping wound; Then her warm lips to the cold face applied, ‘And is it thus, ah! thus we meet?’ she cried, ‘My Pyramus! whence sprung thy cruel fate? My Pyramus!⁠—ah speak, ere ’tis too late. I, thy own Thisbe, but one word implore, One word thy Thisbe never ask’d before.’