A village wrapped in slumber,
Silent between the hills,
Empty of moon-lit marketplace,
Empty of moving life—
Such is my quiet heart.
Shadowy-walled it rests,
Sleeping its heavy sleep;
But sudden across the dark
Tingles a sound of drums!
The drums, the drums, the distant drums,
The throb of the drums strikes up,
The beat of the drums awakes!
Then loud through the little streets,
And strange to the startled roofs,
The drums, the drums approach and pound,
And throb and clamour and thrill and pass,
And between the echoing house-walls
All swart and grim they go,
The battalions of regret,
After the drums, the valiant drums
That die away in the night!
ANÆSTHESIA
I caught the smell of ether
From the glass-roofed room
Where the hospital stood.
Suddenly all about me
I felt a mist of anguish
And the old, old hour of dread
When Death had shambled by.
Yellow with time it is,
This letter on which I look;
But up from it comes a perfume
That stabs me still to the heart;
And suddenly, at the odour,
Through a ghost-like mist I know
Rapture and love and wild regret
When Life, and You, went by.
A SUMMER NIGHT
Mournful the summer moon
Rose from the quiet sea.
Golden and sad and full of regret
As though it would ask of earth
Where all her lovers had vanished
And whither had gone the rose-red lips
That had sighed to her light of old.
Then I caught a pulse of music,
Brokenly, out at the pier-end,
And I heard the voices of girls
Going home in the dark,
Laughing along the sea-wall
Over a lover's word!