"Hence from these ingrate things! To the towns!" they weep,
(If ghosts have tears). You think a wrinkled heap
Of leaves heaved, or a wing stirred, less than this.
Some chance on the midnight cities. Others miss
The few faint lights, thin voices. Wretched these
Doomed to beat long the windy vacancies!
Some mourn through forlorn towns. They prowl and seek
—What seek they? Who knows them? If branches creak
And leaves flap and slow women ply their trade,
Those all are living things, but these are dead,
All that they were, dead totally. What fool still
Knows their extinguished songs? They had their fill
Of average joys and sorrows. They learned how
Love wilts, Death does not wilt. What more left now?
But one ghost yet of all these ghosts may find
Himself not utterly faded.
Through his blind
Some old man's lamp-rays probe the darkness. Sick
Of his gaunt quest, the ghost halts. The clock's tick
Troubles the silence. Tiredly the ghost scans
The opened book on the table. A flame fans,
A weak wan fire floods through his subtle veins.
No, no, not wholly forgotten! Loves and pains
Not suffered wholly for nothing!
(The old man bends
Over the book, makes notes for pious ends,