IF a leaf rustled, she would start: 
 And yet she died, a year ago. 
How had so frail a thing the heart 
 To journey where she trembled so? 
And do they turn and turn in fright,
 Those little feet, in so much night? 
 
The light above the poet?s head 
 Streamed on the page and on the cloth, 
And twice and thrice there buffeted 
 On the black pane a white-winged moth: 
?T was Annie?s soul that beat outside 
 And ?Open, open, open!? cried: 
 
?I could not find the way to God; 
 There were too many flaming suns 
For signposts, and the fearful road 
 Led over wastes where millions 
Of tangled comets hissed and burned? 
 I was bewildered and I turned. 
 
?O, it was easy then! I knew 
 Your window and no star beside. 
Look up, and take me back to you!? 
 ?He rose and thrust the window wide. 
?T was but because his brain was hot 
 With rhyming; for he heard her not. 
 
But poets polishing a phrase 
 Show anger over trivial things; 
And as she blundered in the blaze 
 Towards him, on ecstatic wings, 
He raised a hand and smote her dead; 
 Then wrote ?That I had died instead!?