She looked like a bird from a cloud

   On the clammy lawn,

Moving alone, bare-browed

   In the dim of dawn.

The candles alight in the room

   For my parting meal

Made all things withoutdoors loom

   Strange, ghostly, unreal.

The hour itself was a ghost,

   And it seemed to me then

As of chances the chance furthermost

   I should see her again.

I beheld not where all was so fleet

   That a Plan of the past

Which had ruled us from birthtime to meet

   Was in working at last:

No prelude did I there perceive

   To a drama at all,

Or foreshadow what fortune might weave

   From beginnings so small;

But I rose as if quicked by a spur

   I was bound to obey,

And stepped through the casement to her

   Still alone in the gray.

“I am leaving you . . . Farewell!” I said,

   As I followed her on

By an alley bare boughs overspread;

   “I soon must be gone!”

Even then the scale might have been turned

   Against love by a feather,

—But crimson one cheek of hers burned

   When we came in together.