“Torment!” said I, “thing of evil! you, at least, might have been civil, And not given such answers to the questions I have put to you. When I told you that I loved you, surely then I think I moved you, And I think it had behoved you to make answers straight and true, ’Stead of which you gave me answers which were anything but true.” Quoth the maid, “What’s that to you.” “Be these words our sign of parting, saucy maid!” I shrieked, upstarting. “Get you back into the village, take these clothes along with you! Leave no thread even as a token of these horrid words you’ve spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken! Take these clothes which look like new, And return to where you came from, with these clothes as clean as new!” Quoth the maiden, “Not for you.” So _I_ left the washer maiden and her basket heavy laden, And I hope that I may never, never more behold the two; Yet my sleep is oft enchanted, and my dreams are often haunted By her form when just not wanted, and the basket seems there too, And she asks in tones of mockery, pointing at the basket, too, “What is this, now, sir, to you?” D. J. M. _Edinburgh Paper_, November, 8, 1879. ―――――――― THE PROMISSORY NOTE. ZOïLUS _reads_: In the lonesome latter years, (Fatal years!) To the dropping of my tears Danced the mad and mystic spheres In a rounded, reeling rune, ’Neath the moon, To the dripping and the dropping of my tears. Ah, my soul is swathed in gloom, (Ulalume!) In a dim Titanic tomb, For my gaunt and gloomy soul Ponders o’er the penal scroll, O’er the parchment (not a rhyme), Out of place,――out of time,―― I am shredded, shorn, unshifty, (O, the fifty!) And the days have passed, the three, Over me! And the debit and the credit are as one to him and me! ’Twas the random runes I wrote At the bottom of the note (Wrote, and freely Gave to Greeley), In the middle of the night, In the mellow, moonless night, When the stars were out of sight, When my pulses, like a knell, (Israfel!) Danced with dim and dying fays O’er the ruins of my days, O’er the dimeless, timeless days, When the fifty, drawn at thirty, Seeming thrifty, yet the dirty Lucre of the market, was the most that I could raise!