And the Spirits behind the curtains heard, And also laughed, amused at her word, And at her light-hearted view of him. “Let’s get him made so—just for a whim!” Said the Phantom Ironic. “’Twould serve her right If we coaxed the Will to do it some night.” “O pray not!” pleaded the younger one, The Sprite of the Pities. “She said it in fun!” III But so it befell, whatever the cause, That what she had called him he next year was; And on such a night, when she lay elsewhere, He, watched by those Phantoms, again sat there, And gazed, as if gazing on far faint shores, At the empty bed through the folding-doors As he remembered her words; and wept That she had forgotten them where she slept. DRAWING DETAILS IN AN OLD CHURCH I HEAR the bell-rope sawing, And the oil-less axle grind, As I sit alone here drawing What some Gothic brain designed; And I catch the toll that follows From the lagging bell, Ere it spreads to hills and hollows Where the parish people dwell. I ask not whom it tolls for, Incurious who he be; So, some morrow, when those knolls for One unguessed, sound out for me, A stranger, loitering under In nave or choir, May think, too, “Whose, I wonder?” But care not to inquire. RAKE-HELL MUSES YES; since she knows not need, Nor walks in blindness, I may without unkindness A true thing tell: Which would be truth, indeed, Though worse in speaking, Were her poor footsteps seeking A pauper’s cell. I judge, then, better far She now have sorrow, Than gladness that to-morrow Might know its knell.— It may be men there are Could make of union A lifelong sweet communion— A passioned spell; But _I_, to save her name And bring salvation By altar-affirmation And bridal bell; I, by whose rash unshame These tears come to her:— My faith would more undo her Than my farewell! Chained to me, year by year My moody madness Would wither her old gladness Like famine fell. She’ll take the ill that’s near, And bear the blaming. ’Twill pass. Full soon her shaming They’ll cease to yell. Our unborn, first her moan, Will grow her guerdon, Until from blot and burden A joyance swell; In that therein she’ll own My good part wholly, My evil staining solely My own vile vell. Of the disgrace, may be “He shunned to share it, Being false,” they’ll say. I’ll bear it; Time will dispel The calumny, and prove This much about me, That she lives best without me Who would live well. That, this once, not self-love But good intention Pleads that against convention We two rebel. For, is one moonlight dance, One midnight passion, A rock whereon to fashion Life’s citadel?