But twice or thrice, upon the stair,
I've seen his face—most strangely wan,—
Each time upon me unaware
He came—smooth'd past me, and was gone.
So like a whisper he went by,
I listened after, ear and eye,
Nor could my chafing fancy tell
The meaning of one syllable.
Last night I caught him, face to face,—
He entering his room, and I
Glaring from mine: He paused a space
And met my scowl all shrinkingly,
But with full gentleness: The key
Turned in his door—and I could see
It tremblingly withdrawn and put
Inside, and then—the door was shut.
Then silence. Silence!—why, last night
The silence was tumultuous,
And thundered on till broad daylight;—
O never has it stunned me thus!—
It rolls, and moans, and mumbles yet.—
Ah, God! how loud may silence get
When man mocks at a brother man
Who answers but as silence can!
The silence grew, and grew, and grew,
Till at high noon to-day 'twas heard
Throughout the house; and men flocked through
The echoing halls, with faces blurred
With pallor, gloom, and fear, and awe,
And shuddering at what they saw—
The quiet lodger, as he lay
Stark of the life he cast away.
* * * * *
So strange to-night—those voices there,
Where all so quiet was before;
They say the face has not a care
Nor sorrow in it any more—
His latest scrawl:—"Forgive me—You
Who prayed, 'they know not what they do!'"
My tears wilt never let me see
This man that rooms next door to me!
THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT.
O the waiting in the watches of the night!
In the darkness, desolation, and contrition and affright;
The awful hush that holds us shut away from all delight:
The ever weary memory that ever weary goes
Recounting ever over every aching loss it knows—
The ever weary eyelids gasping ever for repose—
In the dreary, weary watches of the night!
Dark—stifling dark—the watches of the night!
With tingling nerves at tension, how the blackness flashes white
With spectral visitations smitten past the inner sight!—
What shuddering sense of wrongs we've wrought
that may not be redressed—
Of tears we did not brush away—of lips we left unpressed,
And hands that we let fall, with all their loyalty unguessed!
Ah! the empty, empty watches of the night!
What solace in the watches of the night?—
What frailest staff of hope to stay—what faintest shaft of light?
Do we dream and dare believe it, that by never weight of right
Of our own poor weak deservings, we shall win the dawn at last—
Our famished souls find freedom from this penance for the past,
In a faith that leaps and lightens from the gloom
that flees aghast—
Shall we survive the watches of the night?