Mariana

Were thickly crusted, one and all:

The rusted nails fell from the knots

      That held the peach to the garden-wall.

The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:

      Unlifted was the clinking latch;

      Weeded and worn the ancient thatch

Upon the lonely moated grange.

            She only said "My life is dreary,

                  He cometh not," she said;

            She said "I am aweary, aweary;

                  I would that I were dead!"

Her tears fell ere the dews were dried

She could not look on the sweet heaven,

      Either at morn or eventide.

After the flitting of the bats,

      When thickest dark did trance the sky,

      She drew her casement-curtain by,

And glanced athwart the glooming flats.

            She only said "The night is dreary,

                  He cometh not," she said:

            She said "I am aweary, aweary,

                  I would that I were dead!"

Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:

The cock sung out an hour ere light:

      From the dark fen the oxen's low

Came to her: without hope of change,

      In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,

Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn

About the lonely moated grange.

            She only said, "The day is dreary,

                  He cometh not," she said;

            She said, "I am aweary, aweary,

                  I would that I were dead!"

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 dark

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 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!"

The doors upon their hinges creak'd;

The blue fly sung i' 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, "1 am aweary, aweary,

                  I would that I were dead!"

The slow clock ticking, and the sound

Which to the wooing wind aloof

      The poplar made, did all confound

Her sense; but most she loath'd 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!"