The Woman On The Hill

The storm-red sun, through wrecks of wind and rain, And dead leaves driven from the frantic boughs, Where, on the hill-top, stood a gaunt, gray house, Flashed wildest ruby on each rainy pane.

Then woods grew darker than unburdened grief; And, crimson through the woodland’s ruin, streamed The sunset’s glare--a furious eye, which seemed Watching the moon rise like a yellow leaf.

The rising moon, against which, like despair, High on the hill, a woman, darkly drawn, The wild leaves round her, stood; with features wan, And tattered dress and wind-distracted hair.

As still as death, and looking, not through tears, For the young face of one she knows is lost, While in her heart the melancholy frost Gathers of all the unforgotten years.

What if she heard to-night a hurrying hoof, Wild as the whirling of the withered leaf, Bring her a more immedicable grief, A shattered shape to live beneath her roof!

The shadow of him who claimed her once as wife; Her lover!--no!--the wreck of all their past Brought back from battle!--Better to the last A broken heart than heartbreak all her life!