the word she sprang upright.
To her ice-lips she drew his burning ear,
And whispered--he shivered--she whispered light.
She withdrew; she gazed with an asking fear;
He stood with a face ghost-white.

"I wait--ah, would I might wait!" she said;
"But the moon sinks in the tide;
Thou seest it not; I see it fade,
Like one that may not bide.
Alas! I go out in the moonless shade;
Ah, kind! let me stay and hide."

He shivered, he shook, he felt like clay;
And the fear went through his blood;
His face was an awful ashy grey,
And his veins were channels of mud.
The lady stood in a white dismay,
Like a half-blown frozen bud.

"Ah, speak! am I so frightful then?
I live; though they call it death;
I am only cold--say _dear_ again"--
But scarce could he heave a breath;
The air felt dank, like a frozen fen,
And he a half-conscious wraith.

"Ah, save me!" once more, with a hopeless cry,
That entered his heart, and lay;
But sunshine and warmth and rosiness vie
With coldness and moonlight and grey.
He spoke not. She moved not; yet to his eye,
She stood three paces away.

She spoke no more. Grief on her face
Beauty had almost slain.
With a feverous vision's unseen pace
She had flitted away again;
And stood, with a last dumb prayer for grace,
By the window that clanged with rain.

He stood; he stared. She had vanished quite.
The loud wind sank to a sigh;
Grey faces without paled the face of night,
As they swept the window by;
And each, as it passed, pressed a cheek of fright
To the glass, with a staring eye.

And over, afar from over the deep,
Came a long and cadenced wail;
It rose, and it sank, and it rose on the steep
Of the billows that build the gale.
It ceased; but on in his bosom creep
Low echoes that tell the tale.

He opened his lattice, and saw afar,
Over the western sea,
Across the spears of a sparkling star,
A moony vapour flee;
And he thought, with a pang that he could not bar,
The lady it might be.

He turned and looked into the room;
And lo! it was cheerless and bare;
Empty and drear as a hopeless tomb,--
And the lady was not there;
Yet the fire and the lamp drove out the gloom,
As he had driven the fair.

And up in the manhood of his breast,
Sprang a storm of passion and shame;
It tore the pride of his fancied best
In a thousand shreds of blame;
It threw to the ground his ancient crest,
And puffed at his ancient name.

He