THE house sleeps dark and the moon wakes white, <br />The fields are alight with dew; <br />'Oh, will you not come to me, Love, to-night? <br />I have waited the whole night through, <br />For I knew, <br />O Heart of my heart, I knew by my heart, <br />That the night of all nights is this, <br />When elm shall crack and lead shall part, <br />When moulds shall sunder and shot bolts start <br />To let you through to my kiss.' <br /> <br /> <br />So spake she alone in the lonely house. <br />She had wrapped her round with the spell, <br />She called the call, she vowed the vow, <br />And the heart she had pledged knew well <br />That this was the night, the only night, <br />When the moulds might be wrenched apart, <br />When the living and dead, in the dead of the night, <br />Might clasp once more, in the grave's despite, <br />For the price of a living heart. <br /> <br /> <br />But out in the grave the corpse lay white <br />And the grave clothes were wet with dew; <br />'Oh, will you not come to me, Love, to-night, <br />I have waited the whole night through, <br />For I knew <br />That I dared not leave my grave for an hour <br />Since the hour of all hours is near, <br />When you shall come to the hollow bower, <br />In a cast of the wind, in a waft of the Power, <br />To the heart that to-night beats here!' <br /> <br /> <br />The moon grows pale and the house sleeps still <br />Ah, God! do the dead forget? <br />The grave is white and the bed is chill, <br />But a guest may be coming yet. <br />But the hour has come and the hour has gone <br />That never will come again; <br />Love's only chance is over and done, <br />And the quick and the dead are twain, not one, <br />And the price has been paid in vain.<br /><br />Edith Nesbit<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-vain-spell/
