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-winged moth:
-T was 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 bewildered 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.
-T was 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!�