Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Ghost-Bereft (1901). V. Expectation

Jane Barlow (1857–1917)

FLEET wheels had whirled for us, deep hedgerows threading,

Till where, down labyrinthine lanes enfolden,

The grey, green-mantled church stood, half withholden

From passing eyes by elms full-fledged for shedding

Midsummer shade, noon-shrunken, softly spreading

O’er swarded path a dappled pavement, golden

And beryl-flecked, to a door, whose dusk-arch olden

Let glimpse in hesitant gleams, the sill’s gloom dreading.

A knot of children, snowy-bibbed, blue-skirted,

Hung round the gate, from devious ways diverted;

Shawled crone’s slow halt and girl’s light foot one goal

Had found thereby. Grand weather for whose wedding?

Methought: and straight a daw from ivied steading

Swooped startled, as a bell began to—toll.