“Babes new-brought-forth
Obsess my rooms; straight-stretched
Lank corpses, ere outborne to earth;
Yea, throng they as when first from the ’Byss upfetched.
“Dancers and singers
Throb in me now as once;
Rich-noted throats and gossamered fingers
Of heels; the learned in love-lore and the dunce.
“Note here within
The bridegroom and the bride,
Who smile and greet their friends and kin,
And down my stairs depart for tracks untried.
“Where such inbe,
A dwelling’s character
Takes theirs, and a vague semblancy
To them in all its limbs, and light, and atmosphere.
“Yet the blind folk
My tenants, who come and go
In the flesh mid these, with souls unwoke,
Of such sylph-like surrounders do not know.”
“—Will the day come,”
Said the new one, awestruck, faint,
“When I shall lodge shades dim and dumb—
And with such spectral guests become acquaint?”
“—That will it, boy;
Such shades will people thee,
Each in his misery, irk, or joy,
And print on thee their presences as on me.”
ON STINSFORD HILL AT MIDNIGHT
I glimpsed a woman’s muslined form
Sing-songing airily
Against the moon; and still she sang,
And took no heed of me.
Another trice, and I beheld
What first I had not scanned,
That now and then she tapped and shook
A timbrel in her hand.