“Adieu!” the Poet said, “my vanished star,
  Thy duty and thy happiness were one. 
Work is heaven’s best; its fame is sublunar: 
  The fame thou dost not need—­the work is done. 
For thee I am content that these things are;
  More than content were I, my race being run,
Might it be true of me, though none thereon
Should muse regretful—­’While he lived he shone.’”

So said, the Poet rose and went his way,
  And that same lot he proved whereof he spake. 
Madam, my story is told out; the day
  Draws out her shadows, time doth overtake
The morning.  That which endeth call a lay,
  Sung after pause—­a motto in the break
Between two chapters of a tale not new,
Nor joyful—­but a common tale.  Adieu!

And that same God who made your face so fair,
  And gave your woman’s heart its tenderness,
So shield the blessing He implanted there,
  That it may never turn to your distress,
And never cost you trouble or despair,
  Nor granted leave the granter comfortless;
But like a river blest where’er it flows,
Be still receiving while it still bestows.

Adieu, he said, and paused, while she sat mute
  In the soft shadow of the apple-tree;
The skylark’s song rang like a joyous flute,
  The brook went prattling past her restlessly: 
She let their tongues be her tongue’s substitute;
  It was the wind that sighed, it was not she: 
And what the lark, the brook, the wind, had said,
We cannot tell, for none interpreted.

Their counsels might be hard to reconcile,
  They might not suit the moment or the spot. 
She rose, and laid her work aside the while
  Down in the sunshine of that grassy plot;
She looked upon him with an almost smile,
  And held to him a hand that faltered not. 
One moment—­bird and brook went warbling on,
And the wind sighed again—­and he was gone.

So quietly, as if she heard no more
  Or skylark in the azure overhead,
Or water slipping past the cressy shore,
  Or wind that rose in sighs, and sighing fled—­
So quietly, until the alders hoar
  Took him beneath them; till the downward spread
Of planes engulfed him in their leafy seas—­
She stood beneath her rose-flushed apple-trees.

And then she stooped toward the mossy grass,
  And gathered up her work and went her way;
Straight to that ancient turret she did pass,
  And startle back some fawns that were at play. 
She did not sigh, she never said “Alas!”
  Although he was her friend:  but still that day,
Where elm and hornbeam spread a towering dome,
She crossed the dells to her ancestral home.

And did she love him?—­what if she did not? 
  Then home was still the home of happiest years
Nor thought was exiled to partake his lot,
  Nor heart lost courage through forboding fears;
Nor echo did against her secret plot,
  Nor music her betray to painful tears;
Nor life become a dream, and sunshine dim,
And riches poverty, because of him.