tone
Across the levels looked her house
And tattered plot, where nought had grown
But withered trees which creaked their boughs.
No fruit or blossom or petal blown
Was there to gladden mournful eyes,
But all was drab and monotone
Beneath a reign of leaden skies.
A red, red weed was all the flower,
Which crawled serpiginous about
The marsh, unchanged from hour to hour
Until the evening blotted out
The landscape which she called her own.

And, save for a ridge of bent and sand,
Which rose between them and the sea,
The marshes stretched on either hand,
And, ever looking, wearied she
Of low sad purple and sombre brown
And, where the rivulets trickled down,
Moss-tracks of vivid green,
And stiff grey grasses which bend and sigh,
As the marsh wind wails and passes by,
And quagmires in between
The firmer ground--and over all
She heard the curlews' dreary call
As they piped eternally.

II

In the days of grace, in the good days gone,
She had set him up on a golden throne,
The face of a god and a heart of stone,
But now she must live alone,
Alone, alone, alone
In a little grey house of stone
Which stares o'er the marshes towards the sea
Where the great grey waves roll sullenly
Night and day for ever and aye
With mournful voices which seem to say
"Alone, alone, alone."

III

She laid her down on a sandy ledge,
Alone,
And buried her face amid the sedge
And mourned till eve for a broken pledge,
Alone,
And the great grey sea began to moan
Gathering noise from depths unknown
And boomed with a hollow undertone
"Alone, alone, alone."

IV

Up came the night with funeral wing
The ominous depths o'ershadowing,
But she lay a dumb insentient thing--
Alone with a heart of stone,
With neither tears nor hopes nor fears
And the booming swell like a monstrous knell
Tolled strongly in her ears.

V

Alone, alone, alone,
She who had loved and known
On other nights like this
Strong arms about her and many a kiss
And words of gentle tone.

Alone, alone, alone,
A woman she had known
Like a figure carved from stone
Held a letter in her hand
She scarce could understand
Of words which hardly could be read
"Goodbye--There is nothing to be sa