I.
"Onora, Onora,"—her mother is calling,
She sits at the lattice and hears the dew falling
Drop after drop from the sycamores laden
With dew as with blossom, and calls home the maiden,
"Night cometh, Onora."
II.
She looks down the garden-walk caverned with trees,
To the limes at the end where the green arbour is—
"Some sweet thought or other may keep where it found her,
While, forgot or unseen in the dreamlight around her,
Night cometh—Onora!"
III.
She looks up the forest whose alleys shoot on
Like the mute minster-aisles when the anthem is done
And the choristers sitting with faces aslant
Feel the silence to consecrate more than the chant—
"Onora, Onora!"
IV.
And forward she looketh across the brown heath—
"Onora, art coming?"—what is it she seeth?
Nought, nought but the grey border-stone that is wist
To dilate and a**ume a wild shape in the mist—
"My daughter!" Then over
V.
The casement she leaneth, and as she doth so
She is 'ware of her little son playing below:
"Now where is Onora?" He hung down his head
And spake not, then answering blushed scarlet-red,—
"At the tryst with her lover."
VI.
But his mother was wroth: in a sternness quoth she,
"As thou play'st at the ball art thou playing with me?
When we know that her lover to battle is gone,
And the saints know above that she loveth but one
And will ne'er wed another?"
VII.
Then the boy wept aloud; 't was a fair sight yet sad
To see the tears run down the sweet blooms he had:
He stamped with his foot, said—"The saints know I lied
Because truth that is wicked is fittest to hide:
Must I utter it, mother?"
VIII.
In his vehement childhood he hurried within
And knelt at her feet as in prayer against sin,
But a child at a prayer never sobbeth as he—
"Oh! she sits with the nun of the brown rosary,
At nights in the ruin—
IX.
"The old convent ruin the ivy rots off,
Where the owl hoots by day and the toad is sun-proof,
Where no singing-birds build and the trees gaunt and grey
As in stormy sea-coasts appear blasted one way—
But is this the wind's doing?
X.
"A nun in the east wall was buried alive
Who mocked at the priest when he called her to shrive,
And shrieked such a curse, as the stone took her breath,
The old abbess fell backwards and swooned unto d**h
With an Ave half-spoken.
XI.
"I tried once to pa** it, myself and my hound,
Till, as fearing the lash, down he shivered to ground—
A brave hound, my mother! a brave hound, ye wot!
And the wolf thought the same with his fangs at her throat
In the pa** of the Brocken.
XII.
"At dawn and at eve, mother, who sitteth there
With the brown rosary never used for a prayer?
Stoop low, mother, low! If we went there to see,
What an ugly great hole in that east wall must be
At dawn and at even!
XIII.
"Who meet there, my mother, at dawn and at even?
Who meet by that wall, never looking to heaven?
O sweetest my sister, what doeth with thee
The ghost of a nun with a brown rosary
And a face turned from heaven?
XIV.
"Saint Agnes o'erwatcheth my dreams and erewhile
I have felt through mine eyelids the warmth of her smile;
But last night, as a sadness like pity came o'er her,
She whispered—'Say two prayers at dawn for Onora:
The Tempted is sinning.'"
XV.
"Onora, Onora!" they heard her not coming,
Not a step on the gra**, not a voice through the gloaming;
But her mother looked up, and she stood on the floor
Fair and still as the moonlight that came there before,
And a smile just beginning:
XVI.
It touches her lips but it dares not arise
To the height of the mystical sphere of her eyes,
And the large musing eyes, neither joyous nor sorry
Sing on like the angels in separate glory
Between clouds of amber;
XVII.
For the hair droops in clouds amber-coloured till stirred
Into gold by the gesture that comes with a word;
While—O soft!—her speaking is so interwound
Of the dim and the sweet, 't is a twilight of sound
And floats through the chamber.
XVIII.
"Since thou shrivest my brother, fair mother," said she
"I count on thy priesthood for marrying of me,
And I know by the hills that the battle is done.
That my lover rides on, will be here with the sun,
'Neath the eyes that behold thee."
XIX.
Her mother sat silent—too tender, I wis,
Of the smile her dead father smiled dying to kiss:
But the boy started up pale with tears, pa**ion-wrought—
"O wicked fair sister, the hills utter nought!
If he cometh, who told thee?"
XX.
"I know by the hills," she resumed calm and clear,
"By the beauty upon them, that HE is anear:
Did they ever look so since he bade me adieu?
Oh, love in the waking, sweet brother, is true,
As Saint Agnes in sleeping!"
XXI.
Half-ashamed and half-softened the boy did not speak,
And the blush met the lashes which fell on his cheek:
She bowed down to kiss him: dear saints, did he see
Or feel on her bosom the BROWN ROSARY,
That he shrank away weeping?