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Not he, forsooth; he smacked of churchyard mould
And musty odors of moth-eaten palls–
A living death, a walking epitaph!
No lover that for tingling flesh and blood
To rest soft cheek on and change kisses with.
Yet lover somewhere; from his sly cocoon
Time would unshell him. In the interim
What was to do but wait, and mark who strolled
Of evenings up the hill-path and made halt
This side the coppice at a certain gate?
For by that chance which ever serves ill ends,
Within the slanted shadow of The Towers
The maid Griselda dwelt. Her gray scarred sire
Had for cloth doublet changed the steel cuirass,
The sword for gardener’s fork, and so henceforth
In the mild autumn and sundown of life,
Moving erect among his curves and squares
Of lily, rose, and purple flower-de-luce,
Set none but harmless squadrons in the field–
Save now and then at tavern, where he posed,
Tankard in hand and prattling of old days,
A white-mustached epitome of wars.

How runs the proverb touching him who waits?
Who waits shall have the world. Time’s heir is he,
Be he but patient. Thus the thing befell
Wherefrom grew all this history of woe:
Haunting the grounds one night, as his use was
Who loved the dark as bats and owlets do,
Wyndham got sound of voices in the air
That did such strange and goblin changes ring
As left him doubtful whence the murmurs came,
Now here, now there, as they were winged things–
Such trick plays Echo upon hapless wight
Chance-caught in lonely places where she dwells,
Anon a laugh rang out, melodious,
Like the merle’s note when its ecstatic heart
Is packed with summer-time; then all was still–
So still the soul of silence seemed to grieve
The loss of that sweet laughter. In his tracks
The man stopped short, and listened. As he leaned
And craned his neck, and peered into the gloom,
And would the fabulous hundred eyes were his
That Argus in the Grecian legend had,
He saw two figures moving through a drift
Of moonlight that lay stretched across the lawn:
A man’s tall shape, a slim shape close at side,
Her palm in tender fashion pressed to his,
The woven snood about her shoulders fallen,
And from the sombre midnight of her hair
An ardent face out-looking like a star–
As in a vision saw he this, for straight
They vanished. Where those silvery shadows were
Was nothing. Had he dreamed it? Had he gone
Mad with much thinking on her, and so made
Ghosts of his own sick fancies? Like a man
Carved out of alabaster and set up
Within a woodland, he stood rooted there,
Glimmering wanly under pendent boughs.
Spell-bound he stood, in very woeful plight,
Bewildered; and then presently with shock
Of rapid pulses hammering at heart,
As mad besiegers hammer at a gate,
To life came back, and turned on heel to fly
From that accursed spot and all that was,
When once more the girl’s laugh made rich the night,
And melted, and the silence grieved anew.
Like lead his feet were, and he needs must halt.
Close upon this, but further off, a voice
From somewhere–Echo at her trick again!–
Took up the rhyme of Sweetheart, sigh no more.

It was with doubt and trembling
I whispered in her ear.
Go, take her answer, bird-on-bough,
That all the world may hear–
Sweetheart, sigh no more!