Page:Poems Barrett.djvu/126

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."

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?"

Then the boy wept aloud. 'Twas 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?"

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 rosarie,
    At nights in the ruin!

"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?

"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 backward and swooned unto death
    With an Ave half-spoken.

"I tried once to pass 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 pass of the Brocken.