I cried: “O darling, turn your head!”
But never her face I viewed;
“O turn, O turn!” again I said,
And miserably pursued.
At length I came to a Christ-cross stone
Which she had passed without discern;
And I knelt upon the leaves there strown,
And prayed aloud that she might turn.
I rose, and looked; and turn she did;
I cried, “My heart revives!”
“Look more,” she said. I looked as bid;
Her face was all the five’s.
All the five women, clear come back,
I saw in her—with her made one,
The while she drooped upon the track,
And her frail term seemed well-nigh run.
She’d half forgot me in her change;
“Who are you? Won’t you say
Who you may be, you man so strange,
Following since yesterday?”
I took the composite form she was,
And carried her to an arbour small,
Not passion-moved, but even because
In one I could atone to all.
And there she lies, and there I tend,
Till my life’s threads unwind,
A various womanhood in blend—
Not one, but all combined.
THE INSCRIPTION
(A TALE)
Sir John was entombed, and the crypt was closed, and she,
Like a soul that could meet no more the sight of the sun,
Inclined her in weepings and prayings continually,
As his widowed one.
And to pleasure her in her sorrow, and fix his name
As a memory Time’s fierce frost should never kill,
She caused to be richly chased a brass to his fame,
Which should link them still;