If a leaf rustled, she would start:

       And yet she died, a year ago.

     How had so frail a thing the heart

       To journey where she trembled so?

     And do they turn and turn in fright,

       Those little feet, in so much night?

     The light above the poet's head

       Streamed on the page and on the cloth,

     And twice and thrice there buffeted

       On the black pane a white-wing'd moth;

    'Twas Annie's soul that beat outside

       And 'Open, open, open!' cried:

    'I could not find the way to God;

       There were too many flaming suns

     For signposts, and the fearful road

       Led over wastes where millions

     Of tangled comets hissed and burned—

       I was bewilder'd and I turned.

    'O, it was easy then! I knew

       Your window and no star beside.

     Look up, and take me back to you!'

       —He rose and thrust the window wide.

    'Twas but because his brain was hot

       With rhyming; for he heard her not.

     But poets polishing a phrase

       Show anger over trivial things;

     And as she blundered in the blaze

       Towards him, on ecstatic wings,

     He raised a hand and smote her dead;

       Then wrote 'That I had died instead!'