On either side a line chalked on the floor,
They lived for twenty years, and never spoke:
The death-like hush of that divided room
No homely sound of human voices broke.

And all because, one night, a hasty tongue
Had said the word too much, each in her pride
Remorseless, through those years the sisters dwelt,
In living graves of silence, side by side.

Not long enough for them, eternity
And mortal man's inexorable doom:
But they, by petty years, must needs forestall
The everlasting quiet of the tomb!