Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900.djvu/845
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With blackest moss the flower-plots Were thickly crusted, one and all:The rusted nails fell from the knotsThat held the pear to the gable-wall.The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:Unlifted was the clinking latch;Weeded and worn the ancient thatchUpon 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 with the dews at even;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!'
Upon the middle of the night,Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:The cock sung out an hour ere light: From the dark fen the oxen's low
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