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,

Or from the crevice peer'd about.
Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors,
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices call'd her from without.

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

The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,

The slow clock ticking, and the sound Which to the wooing wind aloof

The poplar made, did all confound

Her sense; but most she loathed the hour When the thick-moted sunbeam lay

Athwart the chambers, and the day Was sloping toward his western bower. Then, said she, 'I am very dreary, He will not come,' she said; She wept, 'I am aweary, aweary, Oh God, that I were dead!'

Sweet faces, rounded arms, and bosoms prest

To little harps of gold; and while they mused, Whispering to each other half in fear,

Shrill music reach'd them on the middle sea.