Ioläus / The man that was a ghost

by James Allan Mackereth

She shared with all the brighter part;
The witching sallies lightly flew;
Her thoughts seemed, spilt by subtle art,
Half tear-drops and half dew.
They loved her for her gracious heart,
And the glad winds blew.

The sunbeam of her fleeting life
Gladdened the unsuspecting days;
And all the dusky imps of strife
Paled in her wisdom's lambent rays.
Her laugh to one was as a knife:
But she had pleasure's praise.

And I who loved that conquering smile,
And felt the tears in secret shed,
Who watched her life with kindly guile
Veiling its darlings dead,
Held in a choking hush the while
A heart that feigned—and bled ...

Onward with blind rebellious breast
I ranged, with love, with bale opprest,
Piteous, passionate, all unblest,
The dispossessëd,—God-possest ...

More lonely grew the leaden wave
That broke against the leaning sky;
The melancholy winds 'gan rave
Among the whimpering shrouds on high:
Most lonely up the leaden wave
Two climbed toward yet a lonelier grave—
Where only one should lie.

We neared a grey and grievous land
That thundered by a wintry sea;
I touched the sorrow of her hand,
But nothing sad said she:
She turned from love at death's command
To death eternally.

We passed the numbly moaning bar;
We heard the harbour bell,
Its dull fog-muffled clang from far
Came like a lorn death-knell.
The quay-lights pushed a livid flare
Through shrouding mist; and all things there
Moved like grim shades in hell.

The hammer's clamp on resonant steel;
The siren's shriek; the scream and whirr
Reverberant from forge and wheel;
The fury and the clangorous stir
And plunge of traffic; Vulcan's heel
Crashing on iron,—and the reel
Of sense at loss of her.—

None guessed when, playfully, she said,
With smile that brightened toward her dead,
"To-day across the world I ride
To meet a bridegroom, I the bride."
They thought her mischief lied.

Around us was the deafening roar,
A void, a wild and drear eclipse.
A sadder sweetness than before
Shook her pale, smiling lips;
She waved adieu through vapours hoar,
And vanished in the shadows frore
Among the heedless ships ...
In that dread lapse of all farewell
The spirit, listening, plain could tell
That devils laughed in drifting hell
With guile upon their lips ...