The Chosen

“–I feel a strange benumbing spell,

As one ill-wished!” said she.

And soon it seemed that something fell

Was starving her love for me.

“I feel some curse. O, five were there?”

And wanly she swerved, and went away.

I followed sick: night numbed the air,

And dark the mournful moorland lay.

I cried: “O darling, turn your head!”

But never her face I viewed;

“O turn, O turn!” again I said,

And miserably pursued.

At length I came to a Christ-cross stone

Which she had passed without discern;

And I knelt upon the leaves there strown,

And prayed aloud that she might turn.