This is the old haunted place,—
Haunted by ghosts of spent hours:
Decked by the ivy's green lace,
Sweet with the dusk-opened flowers;
This is the garden you know,
Moon-touched, and tranquil and dear,—
I, alone, walk to and fro,—
Come to me here!
BEFORE THE DAWN
In that one darkest hour, before the dawn is here,
Each soul of us goes sailing, close to the coast of Fear.
There in the windless quiet, from out the folded black,
The things we have forgotten—or would forget—come back.
Old sorrows, long abandoned, or kept with lock and key,
Steal from their prison places to bear us company.
All softly come our little sins—our scarlet sins—and gray.
To keep with us a vigil till breaking of the day.
And there are velvet footsteps; or oft we seem to hear
Light garments brush against the dark; so near—so very near!
From out the red confusion where men long watches keep,
New shadows come—we know they come—and in the dark we weep.
Then heavily, as weighed by tears, each haunted moment goes,
For dawn steps down the morning sky, in robes of gray and rose.