No More Learning

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!

XIII.

"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?

XIV.

"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. '"

XV.

"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:

XVI.

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;

XVII.

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.

XVIII.
"Since thou shrivest my brother, fair mother," said she
"I count on thy priesthood for marrying of me,
And I know by the hills that the battle is done.
That my lover rides on, will be here with the sun,
'Neath the eyes that behold thee. "

XIX.

Her mother sat silent--too tender, I wis,
Of the smile her dead father smiled dying to kiss:
But the boy started up pale with tears, passion-wrought--
"O wicked fair sister, the hills utter nought!
If he cometh, who told thee? "

XX.

"I know by the hills," she resumed calm and clear,
"By the beauty upon them, that HE is anear:
Did they ever look _so_ since he bade me adieu?
Oh, love in the waking, sweet brother, is true,
As Saint Agnes in sleeping! "

XXI.

Half-ashamed and half-softened the boy did not speak,
And the blush met the lashes which fell on his cheek:
She bowed down to kiss him: dear saints, did he see
Or feel on her bosom the BROWN ROSARY,
That he shrank away weeping?


SECOND PART.

_A bed. _ ONORA, _sleeping. _ Angels, _but not near. _


_First Angel. _

Must we stand so far, and she
So very fair?