And endured in its troth our companionship
Through a life of chances, of hopes, and fears;
Nor a word of harshness e’er passed the lip,
Nor a thought unkind dwelt in either heart,
Till we chanced—by what chance did it hap?—to part.
Where Fever, yellow-skinned, bony, gaunt,
With the long blue nails and lip livid white;
With the blood-stain’d orbs that could ever haunt
Our brains by day and our eyes by night;
In her grave-clothes mouldy with graveyard taint