The White Moth.

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-wing'd moth;
'Twas 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 bewilder'd 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.
'Twas 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!'