| Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907. | | | Ghost-Bereft (1901)
V. Expectation | | By Jane Barlow (1857–1917) |
| | | FLEET wheels had whirled for us, deep hedgerows threading, | |
| Till where, down labyrinthine lanes enfolden, | |
| The grey, green-mantled church stood, half withholden | |
| From passing eyes by elms full-fledged for shedding | |
| Midsummer shade, noon-shrunken, softly spreading | 5 |
| O’er swarded path a dappled pavement, golden | |
| And beryl-flecked, to a door, whose dusk-arch olden | |
| Let glimpse in hesitant gleams, the sill’s gloom dreading. | |
| A knot of children, snowy-bibbed, blue-skirted, | |
| Hung round the gate, from devious ways diverted; | 10 |
| Shawled crone’s slow halt and girl’s light foot one goal | |
| Had found thereby. Grand weather for whose wedding? | |
| Methought: and straight a daw from ivied steading | |
| Swooped startled, as a bell began to—toll. | | | | |
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