And then the moon rose: and a white
Low bough of blossoms—grown almost
Where, ere you died, ’t was our delight
To tryst,—dear heart!—I thought your ghost:
—The wood is haunted since that night.
AFTER DEATH
At moonset, when ghost speaks with ghost
And spirits meet where once they sinned,
Between the whispering wood and coast,
My soul met her soul on the wind,
My late-lost Evalind.
I kissed her mouth. Her face was wild.
Two burning shadows were her eyes,
Wherein the love,—that once had smiled
A heartbreak smile,—in some strange wise,
I did not recognize.
Then suddenly I seemed to see
How sin had damned my soul and doomed
To wander thus eternally
With love and loathing, that assumed
The form of her entombed.
THE OLD MAN DREAMS
The blackened walnut in its spicy hull
Rots where it fell;
And, in the orchard, where the trees stand full,
The pear’s brown bell
Drops; and the log-house in the bramble lane,
From whose low door
Stretch yellowing acres of the corn and cane,
He sees once more.
The cat-bird sings upon its porch of pine;
And o’er its gate,
All slender-podded, twists the trumpet-vine
Its leafy weight:
And in the woodland, by the spring, mayhap,
With eyes of joy
Again he bends to set a rabbit-trap,
A brown-faced boy.
Then, whistling, through the underwoods he goes,
Out of the wood,
Where, with young cheeks, red as an autumn rose,
In gingham hood,
His sweetheart waits, her school-books on her arm:
And now it seems
Beside his chair bends down his wife’s fair form—
The old man dreams.