Looking on the desolate street,
Where the March snow drifts and drives,
Trodden black of hurrying feet,
Where the athlete storm-wind strives
With each tree and dangling light,—
Centers, sphered with glittering white,—
Hissing in the dancing snow ...
Backward in my soul I go
To that tempest-haunted night
Of two autumns past, when we,
Hastening homeward, were o'ertaken
Of the storm; and 'neath a tree,
With its wild leaves whisper-shaken,
Sheltered us in that forsaken,
Sad and ancient cemetery,—
Where folk came no more to bury.—
Haggard grave-stones, mossed and crumbled,
Tottered 'round us, or o'ertumbled
In their sunken graves; and some,
Urned and obelisked above
Iron-fenced in tombs, stood dumb
Records of forgotten love.
And again I see the west
Yawning inward to its core
Of electric-spasmed ore,
Swiftly, without pause or rest.
And a great wind sweeps the dust
Up abandoned sidewalks; and,
In the rotting trees, the gust
Shouts again—a voice that would
Make its gaunt self understood
Moaning over death's lean land.
And we sat there, hand in hand;
On the granite; where we read,
By the leaping skies o'erhead,
Something of one young and dead.
Yet the words begot no fear
In our souls: you leaned your cheek
Smiling on mine: very near
Were our lips: we did not speak.
XVIII.
And suddenly alone I stood
With scared eyes gazing through the wood.
For some still sign of ill or good,
To lead me from the solitude.
The day was at its twilighting;
One cloud o'erhead spread a vast wing
Of rosy thunder; vanishing
Above the far hills' mystic ring.
Some stars shone timidly o'erhead;
And toward the west's cadaverous red—
Like some wild dream that haunts the dead
In limbo—the lean moon was led.
Upon the sad, debatable
Vague lands of twilight slowly fell
A silence that I knew too well,
A sorrow that I can not tell.
What way to take, what path to go,
Whether into the east's gray glow,
Or where the west burnt red and low—
What road to choose, I did not know.
So, hesitating, there I stood
Lost in my soul's uncertain wood:
One sign I craved of ill or good,
To lead me from its solitude.
XIX.
It was autumn: and a night,
Full of whispers and of mist,
With a gray moon, wanly whist,
Hanging like a phantom light
O'er the hills. We stood among
Windy fields of weed and flower,
Where the withered seed pod hung,
And the chill leaf-crickets sung.
Melancholy was the hour
With the mystery and loneness
Of the year, that seemed to look
On its own departed face;
As our love then, in its oneness,
All its dead past did retrace,
And from that sad moment took
Presage of approaching parting.—
Sorrowful the hour and dark:
Low among the trees, now starting,
Now concealed, a star's pale spark—
Like a fen-fire—winked and lured
On to shuddering shadows; where
All was doubtful, unassured,
Immaterial; and the bare
Facts of unideal day
Changed to substance such as dreams.
And meseemed then, far away—
Farther than remotest gleams
Of the stars—lost, separated,
And estranged, and out of reach,
Grew our lives away from each,
Loving lives, that long had waited.