And then in the darkness the answer!—It came
From Earth not from Heaven—a glimmering flame,
Behold, at my feet! In the shadow it shone
Mysteriously lovely and dimly alone:
An ember; a sparkle of dew and of glower;
Like the lamp that a spirit hangs under a flower:
As goldenly green as the phosphorus star
A fairy may wear in her diadem's bar:
And hushed was my soul with the lesson of light
That God had revealed to me there in the night:
Though mortal its structure, material its form,
The spiritual message of worm unto worm.
Ghosts
Was it the strain of the waltz that, repeating
"Love," so bewitched me? or only the gleam
There of the lustres, that set my heart beating,
Feeling your presence as one feels a dream?
For, on a sudden, the woman of fashion,
Soft at my side in her diamonds and lace,
Vanished, and pale with reproach or with passion,
You, my dead sweetheart, smiled up in my face.