whence the murmurs came, Now here, now there, as they were winged things—      Such trick plays Echo upon hapless wight Chance-caught in lonely places where she dwells, Anon a laugh rang out, melodious, Like the merle's note when its ecstatic heart Is packed with summer-time; then all was still—      So still the soul of silence seemed to grieve The loss of that sweet laughter. In his tracks The man stopped short, and listened. As he leaned And craned his neck, and peered into the gloom, And would the fabulous hundred eyes were his That Argus in the Grecian legend had, He saw two figures moving through a drift Of moonlight that lay stretched across the lawn:      A man's tall shape, a slim shape close at side, Her palm in tender fashion pressed to his, The woven snood about her shoulders fallen, And from the 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 

 Prev. P 9/21 next