XXI.

The lady did not heed

That the far stars did fail:

Still calm her smile, albeit the while . . . Nay, but she is not pale!

"I have a more than friend

Across the mountains dim:

No other's voice is soft to me,
Unless it nameth him.”

Margret, Margret.

XXII.

"Though louder beats mine heart,

I know his tread again—

And his far plume aye, unless turned away, For the tears do blind me then.

We brake no gold, a sign

Of stronger faith to be;

But I wear his last look in my soul,

Which said, I love but thee!"

Margret, Margret.

XXIII.

IT trembled on the grass,

With a low, shadowy laughter:

And the wind did toll, as a passing soul
Were sped by church-bell, after:
And shadows, 'stead of light,

Fell from the stars above,

In flakes of darkness on her face

Still bright with trusting love.

Margret, Margret.

XXIV.

"He loved but only thee!

That love is transient too.

The wild hawk's bill doth dabble still
I' the mouth that vowed thee true.

Will he open his dull eyes,

When tears fall on his brow? Behold, the death-worm to his heart

Is a nearer thing than thou,

Margret, Margret."

XXV.

Her face was on the ground-
None saw the agony !

But the men at sea did that night agree
They heard a drowning cry.
And when the morning brake,
Fast rolled the river's tide,

With the green trees waving overhead,
And a white corse lain beside.

Margret, Margret.

XXVI.

A knight's bloodhound and he

The funeral watch did keep:

With a thought o' the chase, he stroked its face, As it howled to see him weep.

A fair child kissed the dead,

But shrank before the cold:

And alone, yet proudly, in his hall,
Did stand a baron old.

Margret, Margret.

XXVII.

Hang up my harp again—

I have no voice for song.

Not song but wail, and mourners pale

Not bards, to love belong.

O failing human love!

O light by darkness known!

O false, the while thou treadest earth!

O deaf, beneath the stone!

Margret, Margret.

To rest the weary nurse has gone;
An eight-day watch had watched she,
Rocking beneath the sun and moon
The baby on her knee:

Till Isobel its mother said,

"The fever waneth-wend to bed

For now the watch comes round to me."

II.

Then wearily the nurse did throw

Her pallet in the darkest place

Of that sick room, and slept and dreamed.
And as the gusty wind did blow

The night-lamp's flare across her face,
She saw or seemed, the while she dreamed,
That the tall poplars on the hill,

The seven tall poplars on the hill,
Did clasp the setting sun until

His rays dropped from him, pined and still
As blossoms in frost :

And he waned and he paled, so weirdly crossed, To the colour of moonlight which doth pass Over the dank ridged churchyard grass.

The poplars held the sun, and he

The eyes of the nurse that they should not see, Not for a moment, the babe on her knee, Though she shuddered to feel that it grew to be Too chill, and lay too heavily.

III.

She only dreamed: for all the while
'Twas Lady Isobel that kept
The little baby; and it slept
Fast, warm, as if its mother's smile,
Heavy with love's unmeted weight,
And red as a rose of Harpocrate,
Dropt upon its eyelids, pressed
Lashes to cheek in a sealed rest.

IV.

And more and more smiled Isobel
To see the baby sleep so well—

She knew not that she smiled.
Against the lattice, dull and wild,
Drive the heavy droning drops,
Drop by drop, the sound being one—
As momently time's segments fall
On the ear of God who hears through all,
Eternity's unbroken monotone.

And more and more smiled Isobel
To see the baby sleep so well—
She knew not that she smiled.
The wind in intermission stops
Down in the beechen forest,
Then crieth aloud

As one at the sorest,
Self-stung, self-driven,

And riseth upward to its tops,
Stiffening erect the branches bowed;

Dilating with a tempest-soul

Of gathered sound, the trees that break

Through their own outline with dark hands, and roll A shadow, massive as a cloud in heaven,

Across the castle lake.

And more and more smiled Isobel
To see the baby sleep so well-
She knew not that she smiled;

She knew not that the storm was wild.
Through the uproar drear she could not hear
The castle clock which struck anear-

She heard the low, light breathing of her child.