The poems of Owen Meredith (Honble Robert Lytton.) ::

Both hollow and hill were as dumb as death,
While the heavens were moodily changing form.
And the hush that is herald of creeping storm
Had made heavy the crouch'd land's breath.

II

At the wide-flung casement she stood, full height,
With her glittering hair tumbled over her back.
And, against the black sky's supernatural black,
Shone her white neck, scornfully white.

III

I could catch not a gleam of her anger'd eyes,
(She was sullenly watching the storm-cloud roll)
But I felt they were drawing down into her soul
The thunder that darken'd the skies.

IV

“And so do we part, then, forever?” I said.
“O speak only one word, and I pardon the rest!”
For sole answer, her white scarf over her breast
She tighten'd, not turning her head.

V

“Ah, must sweet love cruelly play with pain?
Or” I groan'd, “are those blue eyes such deserts of blindness
That, O woman, your heart hath no heed of unkindness
To the man on whose breast it hath lain?”

VI

Then alive leapt the lightening. She turn'd, in its glare,
And the tempest had clothed her with terror: it clung
To the folds of her vaporous garments, and hung
In the heaps of her heavy wild hair.

VII

One word broke the silence: but one: and it fell
With the weight of a mountain upon me. Next moment
All was bellowing thunder, and she from my comment
Was gone ere it ceased. Who can tell

VIII

How I got to my home in the horrible hills,
Thro' black swimmings of storm and burst seams of blue rain?
Sick, I lean'd from the lattice, and dizzy with pain.
And listen'd,—and heard the loud rills,

IX

And look'd,—and beheld the red moon low in air.
Then my heart leapt . . . . I felt, and foreknew, it, before
I heard her light hand on the latch of the door!
When it open'd at last,—she was there!

X

Childlike, and wistful, and sorrowful-eyed,
With the rain in her hair, and the tears on her cheek,
Down she knelt—all her fair forehead fallen and meek
In the light of the moon—at my side.

XI

And she call'd me by every caressing old name
She of old had invented and chosen for me,
While she crouch'd at my feet, with her cheek on my knee,
Like a wild thing grown suddenly tame.

XII

'Twas no vision! This morning, the earth, prest beneath
Her light foot keeps the print. 'Twas no vision last night!
For the lily she dropp'd, as she went, is yet white
With the dew on its delicate sheath!—

University of Virginia Library

THE STORM.

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII