The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Volume 2. Browning Elizabeth Barrett

      "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."

      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!"

      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!"

      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 assume a wild shape in the mist —

      "My daughter!" Then over

      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; '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?"

      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 —

      "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 backwards 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.

      "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!

      "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?

      "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.'"

      "Onora, Onora!" they heard her not coming,

      Not a step on the grass, 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:

      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;

      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.

      "Since thou shrivest my brother, fair mother," said she

      "I count on thy priesthood for marrying of me,

      And I know