The Monument-Maker

        I chiselled her monument 
            To my mind's content,
        Took it to the church by night, 
        When her planet was at its height,
And set it where I had figured the place in the daytime. 
                Having niched it there
I stepped back, cheered, and thought its outlines fair, 
                And its marbles rare.

        Then laughed she over my shoulder as in our Maytime: 
            "It spells not me !" she said: 
        "Tells nothing about my beauty, wit, or gay time 
        With all those, quick and dead,
Of high or lowhhead, 
                That hovered near,
Including you, who carve there your devotion; 
                But you felt none, my dear!"

        And then she vanished. Checkless sprang my emotion 
            And forced a tear
        At seeing I'd not been truly known by her, 
        And never prized !-that my memorial here, 
To consecrate her sepulchre,
                Was scorned, almost,
By her sweet ghost:
                Yet I hoped not quite, in her very innermost!