MARIANA.

ITH blackest moss the flower-plots

W

Were thickly crusted, one and all:

The rusted nails fell from the knots

That held the pear to the gable-wall. The broken sheds look'd sad and strange : Unlifted was the clinking latch;

Weeded and worn the ancient thatch

Upon the lonely moated grange.

B

She only said, 'My life is dreary,
He cometh not,' she said;

She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!'

Her tears fell with the dews at even;

Her tears fell ere the dews were dried; She could not look on the sweet heaven,

Either at morn or eventide.

After the flitting of the bats,

When thickest dark did trance the sky, She drew her casement-curtain by,

And glanced athwart the glooming flats. She only said, 'The night is dreary,

He cometh not,' she said;

She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,

I would that I were dead!'

Upon the middle of the night,

Waking she heard the night-fowl crow :

The cock sung out an hour ere light :
From the dark fen the oxen's low
Came to her without hope of change,
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.

She only said, 'The day is dreary,

He cometh not,' she said;

She said, I am aweary, aweary,

I would that I were dead!'

About a stone-cast from the wall

A sluice with blacken'd waters slept, And o'er it many, round and small, The cluster'd marish-mosses crept. Hard by a poplar shook alway,

All silver-green with gnarled bark:
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.

She only said, 'My life is dreary,
He cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!'

And ever when the moon was low,

And the shrill winds were up and away,

In the white curtain, to and fro,

She saw the gusty shadow sway. But when the moon was very low,

And wild winds bound within their cell,

The shadow of the poplar fell

Upon her bed, across her brow.

She only said, 'The night is dreary,

He cometh not,' she said;

She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!'

All day within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creak'd;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse

Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd,