7. For a raven ever croaks, at my side, Keep watch and ward, keep watch and ward, Or thou wilt prove their tool. Yea too, myself from myself I guard, For often a man's own angry pride Is cap and bells for a fool. 8. Perhaps the smile and tender tone Came out of her pitying womanhood, For am I not, am I not, here alone So many a summer since she died, My mother, who was so gentle and good? Living alone in an empty house, Here half-hid in the gleaming wood, Where I hear the dead at midday moan, And the shrieking rush of the wainscot mouse, And my own sad name in corners cried, When the shiver of dancing leaves is thrown About its echoing chambers wide, Till a morbid hate and horror have grown Of a world in which I have hardly mixt, And a morbid eating lichen fixt On a heart half-turn'd to stone. 9. O heart of stone, are you flesh, and caught By that you swore to withstand? For what was it else within me wrought But, I fear, the new strong wine of love, That made my tongue so stammer and trip When I saw the treasured splendour, her hand, Come sliding out of her sacred glove, And the sunlight broke from her lip? 10. I have play'd with her when a child; She remembers it now we meet. Ah well, well, well, I may be beguiled By some coquettish deceit. Yet, if she were not a cheat, If Maud were all that she seem'd, And her smile had all that I dream'd, Then the world were not so bitter But a smile could make it sweet. VII. 1. Did I hear it half in a doze Long since, I know not where? Did I dream it an hour ago, When asleep in this arm-chair? 2. Men were drinking together, Drinking and talking of me; 'Well, if it prove a girl, the boy Will have plenty: so let it be.' 3. Is it an echo of something Read with a boy's delight, Viziers nodding together In some Arabian night? 4. Strange, that I hear two men, Somewhere, talking of me; 'Well, if it prove a girl, my boy Will have plenty: so let it be.' VIII. She came to the village church, And sat by a pillar alone; An angel watching an urn Wept over her, carved in stone; And once, but once, she lifted her eyes, And suddenly, sweetly, strangely blush'd To find they were met by my own; And suddenly, sweetly, my heart beat stronger And thicker, until I heard no longer The snowy-banded, dilettante, Delicate-handed priest intone; And thought, is it pride, and mused and sigh'd 'No surely, now it cannot be pride.' IX. I was walking a mile, More than a mile from the shore, The sun look'd out with a smile Betwixt the cloud and the moor, And riding at set of day Over the dark moor land, Rapidly riding far away, She waved to me with her hand. There were two at her side, Something flash' d in the sun, Down by the hill I saw them ride, In a moment they were gone: Like a sudden spark Struck vainly in the night, And back returns the dark With no more hope of light. X.