• DID she in summer write it, or in spring,
• Or with this wail of autumn at her ears,
• Or in some winter left among old years
• Scratched it through tettered cark? A certain thing
• That round her heart the frost was hardening,
• Not to be thawed of tears, which on this pane
• Channelled the rime, perchance, in fevered rain,
• For false man's sake and love's most bitter sting.

• Howbeit, between this last word and the next
• 10Unwritten, subtly seasoned was the smart,
• And here at least the grace to weep: if she,
• Rather, midway in her disconsolate text,
• Rebelled not, loathing from the trodden heart
• That thing which she had found man's love to be.

   

• “THERE is a budding morrow in midnight:”—
• So sang our Keats, our English nightingale.
• And here, as lamps across the bridge turn pale
• In London's smokeless resurrection-light,
• Dark breaks to dawn. But o'er the deadly blight
• Of love deflowered and sorrow of none avail
• Which makes this man gasp and this woman
• quail,
• Can day from darkness ever again take flight?

• Ah! gave not these two hearts their mutual pledge,
• 10Under one mantle sheltered 'neath the hedge
• In gloaming courtship? And O God! to-day
• He only knows he holds her;—but what part
• Can life now take? She cries in her locked heart,—
• “Leave me—I do not know you—go away!”

       

• BEHOLD Fiammetta, shown in Vision here.
• Gloom-girt 'mid Spring-flushed apple-growth she
• stands;
• And as she sways the branches with her hands,
• Along her arm the sundered bloom falls sheer,
• In separate petals shed, each like a tear;
• While from the quivering bough the bird expands
• His wings. And lo! thy spirit understands
• Life shaken and shower'd and flown, and Death
• drawn near.

• All stirs with change. Her garments beat the air:
• 10 The angel circling round her aureole
• Shimmers in flight against the tree's grey bole:
• While she, with reassuring eyes most fair,
• A presage and a promise stands; as 'twere
• On Death's dark storm the rainbow of the Soul.