Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/830

A branch at the corner cocks an obscene eye
As she passes—passes—by and by—
A hand stretches out from a column's edge,
Faces float in a phosphorent wedge
Through the points of arches, and there is speech
In the carven roof-groins out of reach.
A love-word, a lust-word, shivers and mocks
The placid stroke of the village clocks.
Does the lady hear?
Is sny one near?
She jeers at life, must she wed instead
The cold dead?
A marriage-bed of moist green mould,
With an over-head tester of beaten gold.
A splendid price for a splendid scorn,
A tombstone pedigree snarled with thorn
Clouding the letters and the fleur-de-lis,
She will have them in granite for her heart's chill ease.

I set the candle in a draught of air
And watched it swale to the last thin flare.
They laid her in a fair chamber hung with arras,
And they wept her virgin soul.
The arras was woven of the story of Minos and Dictynna.
But I grieved that I could no longer hear the shuffle of her feet along the portico,
And the ruffling of her train against the stones.