The shadow's finger points the dismal hour!
Thus Wyndham, with hands clasped behind his back,
Watching the languid and reluctant sun
Fade from the metal disk beside the door.
The hours hung heavy up there on the hill,
Where life was little various at best
And merriment had long since ta'en its flight.
Sometimes he sat and conned the flying clouds
Till on dusk's bosom nestled her one star,
And spoke no word, nor seemed alive at all,
But a mere shape and counterfeit of life;
Or, urged by some swift hunger for green boughs,
Would bid the hound to heel, and disappear
Into the forest, with himself communing
For lack of gossip. So do lonely men
Make themselves tedious to their tedious selves.
Thus passed he once in a white blaze of noon
Under his oaks, and muttered as he went:

"'My father's daughter' and 'your father's son'!
Faith, but it was a shrewd and nimble phrase,
And left me with no fitting word at tongue.
The wench hath wit and matter of her own,
And beauty, that doth seldom mate with wit,
Nature hath painted her a proper brown--
A russet-colored wench that knows her worth.
And mincing, too--should have her ruff propt up
With supertasses, like a dame at Court,
And go in cloth-of-gold. I'll get a suit
Of Genoa velvet, and so take her eye.