'Shall I write to her? shall I go?
Ask her to marry me by and by?
* * * * *
Go little letter, apace, apace;
Fly!
Fly to the light in the valley below--
Tell my wish to her dewy blue eye.'
The letter is sent, and no answer comes; and then he despairs, as he
well may, and in the 'wet west wind' of the spring he wishes himself
dead:
'The mist and the rain, the mist and the rain!
Is it ay or no? is it ay or no?
And never a glimpse of her window-pane!
And I may die but the grass will grow,
And the grass will grow when I am gone,
And the wet west wind and the world will go on.'