Death-in-Life by Ellen Glasgow

When the blasts beat loud and the tempests shriek, / And the winds are smote as the chords of a lyre, / I curtain the cold where the corners leak, / Tossing the logs till the flames leap higher, / As I sit on the hearth while the rafters creak, / Feeding the fangs of the hungry fire. / (_Hark! 'tis a child on the howling plain! _ / _Nay, the fir-tree's tap on the window pane._)

Do you hear her knock? Are her feet on the stones? / She may call in vain, for the storm is loud, / And her speech is the rattle of rigid bones. / Perchance she is lost where the thickets crowd; / It is far from the church where a vault she owns, / And for cover she has but a crumbling shroud. / (_'Tis a mad soul clutched by a demon -- hist_! / _Nay, nay, but the wail of the wind, I wist._)

She enters the door with a blast of cold -- / She enters to me and to my embrace; / Her fingers are freed from their fleshly fold, / The veil is rent from her ashen face. / To her sheet there lingers a scent of mould, / Where the wily worms have woven a trace. / (_Hark! is it Love on the writhing rack! _ / _Nay, nay, but the wolves on a shepherd's track._)

She has taken her seat at my board of pine, / We have poured the water and broken the bread, / I have pledged her health in the blood-red wine, / She has bowed to me with her spectral head. / I am hers forever, as she is mine, / I shall lie with her in her nuptial bed. / (_Hark! 'tis a stroke on a coffin nail! _ / _Nay, the beat of your heart as the pulses fail! _)

From her fleshless lips I have felt her kiss / (The room is small, but the world is wide). / What matter the honours that I shall miss, / When I find her lying against my side? / From the reefs of Fate God has spared me this -- / The love that is long and the breast of a bride. / (_For bone of my bone I have chosen Death! _ / _"Nay, nay -- ah, love, I am Life," she saith._)