They left her with her dead; they could not choose But grant the spirit burning in her face Rights that their pity urged them to refuse. They did her sorrow and the dead a grace. All night they heard her passing footsteps trace Down to the garden from the room of death. They heard her singing there, lowly, with gentle breath, To the cool darkness full of sleeping flowers, Then back, still singing soft, with quiet tread, But at the dawn her singing gathered powers Like to the dying swan who lifts his head On Eastnor, lifts it, singing, dabbled red, Singing the glory in his tumbling mind, Before the doors burst in, before death strikes him blind. So triumphing her song of love began, Ringing across the meadows like old woe Sweetened by poets to the help of man Unconquered in eternal overthrow; Like a great trumpet from the long ago Her singing towered; all the valley heard. Men jingling down to meadow stopped their teams and stirred. And they, the Occleves, hurried to the door, And burst it, fearing; there the singer lay Drooped at her lover’s bedside on the floor, Singing her passionate last of life away. White flowers had fallen from a blackthorn spray Over her loosened hair. Pale flowers of spring Filled the white room of death; they covered everything. Primroses, daffodils, and cuckoo-flowers. She bowed her singing head on Michael’s breast. "Oh, it was sweet," she cried, "that love of ours. You were the dearest, sweet; I loved you best. Beloved, my beloved, let me rest By you forever, little Michael mine. Now the great hour is stricken, and the bread and wine "Broken and spilt; and now the homing birds Draw to a covert, Michael; I to you. Bury us two together," came her words. The dropping petals fell about the two. Her heart had broken; she was dead. They drew Her gentle head aside; they found it pressed Against the broidered ’kerchief spread on Michael’s breast, The one that bore her name in Michael’s hair, Given so long before. They let her lie, While the dim moon died out upon the air, And happy sunlight coloured all the sky. The last cock crowed for morning; carts went by; Smoke rose from cottage chimneys; from the byre The yokes went clanking by, to dairy, through the mire. In the day’s noise the water’s noise was stilled, But still it slipped along, the cold hill-spring, Dropping from leafy hollows, which it filled, On to the pebbly shelves which made it sing; Glints glittered on it from the ’fisher’s wing; It saw the moorhen nesting; then it stayed In a great space of reeds where merry otters played. Slowly it loitered past the shivering reeds Into a mightier water; thence its course Becomes a pasture where the salmon feeds, Wherein no bubble tells its humble source; But the great waves go rolling, and the horse Snorts at the bursting waves and will not drink, And the great ships go outward, bubbling to the brink,