| |
| WITH blackest moss the flower-plots | |
| Were thickly crusted, one and all: | |
| The rusted nails fell from the knots | |
| That held the pear to the gable-wall. | |
| The broken sheds look’d sad and strange: | 5 |
| Unlifted was the clinking latch; | |
| Weeded and worn the ancient thatch | |
| Upon the lonely moated grange. | |
| She only said, ‘My life is dreary, | |
| He cometh not,’ she said; | 10 |
| She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary, | |
| I would that I were dead!’ | |
| |
| Her tears fell with the dews at even; | |
| Her tears fell ere the dews were dried; | |
| She could not look on the sweet heaven, | 15 |
| Either at morn or eventide. | |
| After the flitting of the bats, | |
| When thickest dark did trance the sky, | |
| She drew her casement-curtain by, | |
| And glanced athwart the glooming flats. | 20 |
| She only said, ‘The night is dreary, | |
| He cometh not,’ she said; | |
| She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary, | |
| I would that I were dead!’ | |
| |
| Upon the middle of the night, | 25 |
| Waking she heard the night-fowl crow: | |
| The cock sung out an hour ere light: | |
| From the dark fen the oxen’s low | |
| Came to her: without hope of change, | |
| In sleep she seem’d to walk forlorn, | 30 |
| Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn | |
| About the lonely moated grange. | |
| She only said, ‘The day is dreary, | |
| He cometh not,’ she said; | |
| She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary, | 35 |
| I would that I were dead!’ | |
| |
| About a stone-cast from the wall | |
| A sluice with blacken’d waters slept, | |
| And o’er it many, round and small, | |
| The cluster’d marish-mosses crept. | 40 |
| Hard by a poplar shook alway, | |
| All silver-green with gnarlèd bark: | |
| For leagues no other tree did mark | |
| The level waste, the rounding gray. | |
| She only said, ‘My life is dreary, | 45 |
| He cometh not,’ she said; | |
| She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary, | |
| I would that I were dead!’ | |
| |
| And ever when the moon was low, | |
| And the shrill winds were up and away | 50 |
| In the white curtain, to and fro, | |
| She saw the gusty shadow sway. | |
| But when the moon was very low, | |
| And wild winds bound within their cell, | |
| The shadow of the poplar fell | 55 |
| Upon her bed, across her brow. | |
| She only said, ‘The night is dreary, | |
| He cometh not,’ she said; | |
| She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary, | |
| I would that I were dead!’ | 60 |
| |
| All day within the dreamy house, | |
| The doors upon their hinges creak’d; | |
| The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse | |
| Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek’d, | |
| Or from the crevice peer’d about. | 65 |
| Old faces glimmer’d thro’ the doors, | |
| Old footsteps trod the upper floors, | |
| Old voices call’d her from without. | |
| She only said, ‘My life is dreary, | |
| He cometh not,’ she said; | 70 |
| She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary, | |
| I would that I were dead!’ | |
| |
| The sparrow’s chirrup on the roof, | |
| The slow clock ticking, and the sound | |
| Which to the wooing wind aloof | 75 |
| The poplar made, did all confound | |
| Her sense; but most she loath’d the hour | |
| When the thick-moted sunbeam lay | |
| Athwart the chambers, and the day | |
| Was sloping toward his western bower. | 80 |
| Then, said she, ‘I am very dreary, | |
| He will not come,’ she said; | |
| She wept, ‘I am aweary, aweary, | |
| O God, that I were dead!’ | |
| |
