I "YOU look like a widower," she said Through the folding-doors with a laugh from the bed, As he sat by the fire in the outer room, Reading late on a night of gloom, And a cab-hack's wheeze, and the clap of its feet In its breathless pace on the smooth wet street, Were all that came to them now and then. . . . "You really do!" she quizzed again. II And the Spirits behind the curtains heard, And also laughed, amused at her word, And at her light-hearted view of him. "Let's get him made so -- just for a whim!" Said the Phantom Ironic. "'Twould serve her right If we coaxed the Will to do it some night." "O pray not!" pleaded the younger one, The Sprite of the Pities. "She said it in fun!" III But so it befell, whatever the cause, That what she had called him he next year was; And on such a night, when she lay elsewhere, He, watched by those Phantoms, again sat there, And gazed, as if gazing on far faint shores, At the empty bed through the folding-doors As he remembered her words; and wept That she had forgotten them where she slept. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DOMESDAY BOOK: THE JURY DELIBERATES by EDGAR LEE MASTERS SONGS FOR THE PEOPLE by FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS HARPER BRIDAL BALLAD by EDGAR ALLAN POE THE GENERAL by SIEGFRIED SASSOON SENEX TO MATT. PRIOR by JAMES KENNETH STEPHEN PSALM 76 by OLD TESTAMENT BIBLE AN EPILOGUE TO THE STEALING OF DIONYSOS: IACHOS SPEAKING by GORDON BOTTOMLEY |