First Part

"Onora, Onora,"--her mother is calling,She sits at the lattice and hears the dew fallingDrop after drop from the sycamores ladenWith dew as with blossom, and calls home the maiden,"Night cometh, Onora."

She looks down the garden-walk caverned with trees,To the limes at the end where the green arbour is--"Some sweet thought or other may keep where it found her,While, forgot or unseen in the dreamlight around her,Night cometh--Onora!"

She looks up the forest whose alleys shoot onLike the mute minster-aisles when the anthem is doneAnd the choristers sitting with faces aslantFeel the silence to consecrate more than the chant--"Onora, Onora!"

And forward she looketh across the brown heath--"Onora, art coming?"--what is it she seeth?Nought, nought but the grey border-stone that is wistTo dilate and assume a wild shape in the mist--"My daughter!" Then over

The casement she leaneth, and as she doth soShe is 'ware of her little son playing below:"Now where is Onora?" He hung down his headAnd spake not, then answering blushed scarlet-red,--"At the tryst with her lover."

But his mother was wroth: in a sternness quoth she,"As thou play'st at the ball art thou playing with me?When we know that her lover to battle is gone,And the saints know above that she loveth but oneAnd will ne'er wed another?"

Then the boy wept aloud; 't was a fair sight yet sadTo see the tears run down the sweet blooms he had:He stamped with his foot, said--"The saints know I liedBecause truth that is wicked is fittest to hide:Must I utter it, mother?"

In his vehement childhood he hurried withinAnd knelt at her feet as in prayer against sin,But a child at a prayer never sobbeth as he--"Oh! she sits with the nun of the brown rosary,At nights in the ruin--

"The old convent ruin the ivy rots off,Where the owl hoots by day and the toad is sun-proof,Where no singing-birds build and the trees gaunt and greyAs in stormy sea-coasts appear blasted one way--But is this the wind's doing?

"A nun in the east wall was buried aliveWho mocked at the priest when he called her to shrive,And shrieked such a curse, as the stone took her breath,The old abbess fell backwards and swooned unto deathWith an Ave half-spoken.

"I tried once to pass it, myself and my hound,Till, as fearing the lash, down he shivered to ground--A brave hound, my mother! a brave hound, ye wot!And the wolf thought the same with his fangs at her throatIn the pass of the Brocken.

"At dawn and at eve, mother, who sitteth thereWith the brown rosary never used for a prayer?Stoop low, mother, low! If we went there to see,What an ugly great hole in that east wall must beAt dawn and at even!

"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 theeThe ghost of a nun with a brown rosaryAnd a face turned from heaven?

"Saint Agnes o'erwatcheth my dreams and erewhileI 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.'"

"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 floorFair and still as the moonlight that came there before,And a smile just beginning:

It touches her lips but it dares not ariseTo the height of the mystical sphere of her eyes,And the large musing eyes, neither joyous nor sorrySing on like the angels in separate gloryBetween clouds of amber;

For the hair droops in clouds amber-coloured till stirredInto gold by the gesture that comes with a word;While--O soft!--her speaking is so interwoundOf the dim and the sweet, 't is a twilight of soundAnd floats through the chamber.

"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."

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?"

"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!"

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 seeOr feel on her bosom the BROWN ROSARY,That he shrank away weeping?