And the low sound of sobbing kept time to the strain,
While afar to the Future its echoings fled,
To bring back that hour and its desolate pain;
And apart in a spot where the light could not shine,
I knelt in the gloom that henceforward is mine,
As she lay over there,
With no thought and no care,
And she was to have stood there, my bride, my Clare!”
He looked across the lawn to her window, his heart aching to stand by her side, to pillow her dying head on his throbbing breast.
“Dying, and I not there!” he groaned. “Dying, perhaps already dead!”