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Various

"The Illustrated London Reading Book"


She only said, "The night is dreary--
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, weary,
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
Came to her. Without hope of change,
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "The day is dreary
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, weary,
I would that I were dead!"
About a stone-cast from the wall
A sluice with blacken'd waters slept;
And o'er it many, round and small,
The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.
Hard by, a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarled bark;
For leagues, no other tree did dark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
She only said, "My life is dreary--
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, weary,
I would that I were dead!"
And ever, when the moon was low,
And the shrill winds were up and away
In the white curtain, to and fro
She saw the gusty shadow sway.


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