Well, the priest, whom more perceptions moved than one,
Said she erred at the first to have written as if she were dead
Her name and adjuration; but since it was done
Nought could be said
Save that she must abide by the pledge, for the peace of her soul,
And so, by her life, maintain the apostrophe good,
If she wished anon to reach the coveted goal
Of beatitude.
To erase from the consecrate text her prayer as there prayed
Would aver that, since earth’s joys most drew her, past doubt,
Friends’ prayers for her joy above by Jesu’s aid
Could be done without.
Moreover she thought of the laughter, the shrug, the jibe
That would rise at her back in the nave when she should pass
As another’s avowed by the words she had chosen to inscribe
On the changeless brass.
And so for months she replied to her Love: “No, no”;
While sorrow was gnawing her beauties ever and more,
Till he, long-suffering and weary, grew to show
Less warmth than before.
And, after an absence, wrote words absolute:
That he gave her till Midsummer morn to make her mind clear;
And that if, by then, she had not said Yea to his suit,
He should wed elsewhere.
Thence on, at unwonted times through the lengthening days
She was seen in the church—at dawn, or when the sun dipt
And the moon rose, standing with hands joined, blank of gaze,
Before the script.
She thinned as he came not; shrank like a creature that cowers
As summer drew nearer; but still had not promised to wed,
When, just at the zenith of June, in the still night hours,
She was missed from her bed.
“The church!” they whispered with qualms; “where often she sits.”
They found her: facing the brass there, else seeing none,
But feeling the words with her finger, gibbering in fits;
And she knew them not one.
And so she remained, in her handmaids’ charge; late, soon,
Tracing words in the air with her finger, as seen that night—
Those incised on the brass—till at length unwatched one noon,
She vanished from sight.