The Pot of Basil by Bernard Capes — Read

"And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun, / And she forgot the blue above the trees, / And she forgot the dells where waters run, / And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze; / She had no knowledge when the day was done, / And the new moon she saw not: but in peace / Hung over her sweet basil ever more, / And moistened it with tears unto the core. "

In that strange long sleep of swoons and haunted wakings there was a dream she had. Something had always troubled her -- a sense of something left undone, on the fulfilment of which a rapturous tryst depended. It was associated with a promise, which yet was a promise conditional on something to be performed. At first, in her half-lucid intervals, she had been content to lie quite still and resigned, secure in the thought that no more than the third day was needed to see her broken heart made whole in the transport of a swift re-union; but the day came and passed, and she was still lying unreleased in the quiet room. Why was it so? She had made so sure of the promise, and yet the sign had been withheld. Weak tears dropped from her eyes. If not three days, then what? Soon it must be, in this state of bodily and mental prostration into which she was fallen. But when? O, death had been cruel to cut short and confound that message in the very moment of its utterance!