IV

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!"