I.
I stood in an ancient garden
With high red walls around;
Over them gray and green lichens
In shadowy arabesque wound.
The topmost climbing blossoms
On fields kine-haunted looked out;
But within were shelter and shadow,
And daintiest odours about.
There were alleys and lurking arbours—
Deep glooms into which to dive;
The lawns were as soft as fleeces—
Of daisies I counted but five.
The sun-dial was so aged
It had gathered a thoughtful grace;
And the round-about of the shadow
Seemed to have furrowed its face.
The flowers were all of the oldest
That ever in garden sprung;
Red, and blood-red, and dark purple,
The rose-lamps flaming hung.
Along the borders fringéd
With broad thick edges of box,
Stood fox-gloves and gorgeous poppies,
And great-eyed hollyhocks.
There were junipers trimmed into castles,
And ash-trees bowed into tents;
For the garden, though ancient and pensive,
Still wore quaint ornaments.
It was all so stately fantastic,
Its old wind hardly would stir:
Young Spring, when she merrily entered,
Must feel it no place for her!
II.
I stood in the summer morning
Under a cavernous yew;
The sun was gently climbing,
And the scents rose after the dew.
I saw the wise old mansion,
Like a cow in the noonday-heat,
Stand in a pool of shadows
That rippled about its feet.
Its windows were oriel and latticed,
Lowly and wide and fair;
And its chimneys like clustered pillars
Stood up in the thin blue air.
White doves, like the thoughts of a lady,
Haunted it in and out;
With a train of green and blue comets,
The peacock went marching about.
The birds in the trees were singing
A song as old as the world,
Of love and green leaves and sunshine,
And winter folded and furled.
They sang that never was sadness
But it melted and passed away;
They sang that never was darkness
But in came the conquering day.
And I knew that a maiden somewhere,
In a sober sunlit gloom,
In a nimbus of shining garments,
An aureole of white-browed bloom,
Looked out on the garden dreamy,
And knew not that it was old;
Looked past the gray and the sombre,
And saw but the green and the gold.
III.
I stood in the gathering twilight,
In a gently blowing wind;
And the house looked half uneasy,
Like one that was left behind.
The roses had lost their redness,
And cold the grass had grown;
At roost were the pigeons and peacock,
And the dial was dead gray stone.
The world by the gathering twilight
In a gauzy dusk was clad;
It went in through my eyes to my spirit,
And made me a little sad.
Grew and gathered the twilight,
And filled my heart and brain;
The sadness grew more than sadness,
And turned to a gentle pain.
Browned and brooded the twilight,
And sank down through the calm,
Till it seemed for some human sorrows
There could not be any balm.
IV.
Then I knew that, up a staircase,
Which untrod will yet creak and shake,
Deep in a distant chamber,
A ghost was coming awake.
In the growing darkness growing—
Growing till her eyes appear,
Like spots of a deeper twilight,
But more transparent clear—
Thin as hot air up-trembling,
Thin as a sun-molten crape,
The deepening shadow of something
Taketh a certain shape;
A shape whose hands are uplifted
To throw back her blinding hair;
A shape whose bosom is heaving,
But draws not in the air.
And I know, by what time the moonlight
On her nest of shadows will sit,
Out on the dim lawn gliding
That shadow of shadows will flit.
V.
The moon is dreaming upward
From a sea of cloud and gleam;
She looks as if she had seen us
Never but in a dream.
Down that stair I know she is coming,
Bare-footed, lifting her train;
It creaks not—she hears it creaking,
For the sound is in her brain.
Out at the side-door she’s coming,
With a timid glance right and left!
Her look is hopeless yet eager,
The look of a heart bereft.
Across the lawn she is flitting,
Her eddying robe in the wind!
Are her fair feet bending the grasses?
Her hair is half lifted behind!