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!

Sing it, sing it, tawny throat,
Upon the wayside tree,
How fair she is, how true she is,
How dear she is to me--
Sweetheart sigh no more!

Sing it, sing it, tawny throat,
And through the summer long
The winds among the clover-tops,
And brooks, for all their silvery stops,
Shall envy you the song--
Sweetheart, sigh no more.

'T is said the Malays have an arrow steeped
In some strange drug whose subtile properties
Are such that if the point but prick the skin
Death stays there. Like to that fell cruel shaft
This slender rhyme was. Through the purple dark
Straight home it sped, and into Wyndham's veins
Its drop of sudden poison did distill.
Now no sound was, save when a dry twig snapped
And rustled softly down from branch to branch,
Or on its pebbly shoals the meagre brook
Made intermittent murmur. "So, 't is he!"
Thus Wyndham breathing thickly, with his eyes
Dilating in the darkness, "Darrell--he!
I set my springe for other game than this;
Of hare or rabbit dreamed I, not of wolf.
His freque