Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/830

710 A branch at the corner cocks an obscene eye As she passes—passes—by and by— A hand stretches out from a column's edge, Faces float in a phosphorent wedge Through the points of arches, and there is speech In the carven roof-groins out of reach. A love-word, a lust-word, shivers and mocks The placid stroke of the village clocks. Does the lady hear? Is sny one near? She jeers at life, must she wed instead The cold dead? A marriage-bed of moist green mould, With an over-head tester of beaten gold. A splendid price for a splendid scorn, A tombstone pedigree snarled with thorn Clouding the letters and the fleur-de-lis, She will have them in granite for her heart's chill ease.

I set the candle in a draught of air And watched it swale to the last thin flare. They laid her in a fair chamber hung with arras, And they wept her virgin soul. The arras was woven of the story of Minos and Dictynna. But I grieved that I could no longer hear the shuffle of her feet along the portico, And the ruffling of her train against the stones.