Where old shadows haunt old places, Loft and hopper, stair and bin; Ghostly with the dust that laces Webs that usher phantoms in, Wistful with remembered faces.
While the frogs’ grave litanies Drowse in far-off antiphone, Supplicating, till the eyes Of dead friendships, long alone In the dusky corners,--rise.
Moonbeams? or the twinkling tip Of a star? or, in the darkling Twilight, fireflies? there that dip-- As if Night a myriad sparkling Jewels from her hands let slip.
Where, I dream, my youth still crosses, With a corn-sack for the meal, Through the sprinkled ferns and mosses, To the gray mill’s lichened wheel, Where the water drips and tosses.
The deep seclusion of this forest path,-- O’er which the green boughs weave a canopy; Along which bluet and anemone Spread a dim carpet; where the Twilight hath Her dark abode; and, sweet as aftermath, Wood-fragrance roams,--has so enchanted me, That yonder blossoming bramble seems to be Some Sylvan resting, rosy from her bath: Has so enspelled me with tradition’s dreams, That every foam-white stream that, twinkling, flows, And every bird that flutters wings of tan, Or warbles hidden, to my fancy seems A Naiad dancing to a Faun who blows Wild woodland music on the pipes of Pan.
One well might deem, among these miles of woods, Such were the Forests of the Holy Grail,-- Brocéliand and Dean: where, clothed in mail, The Knights of Arthur rode, and all the broods Of legend laired.--And, where no sound intrudes Upon the ear, except the glimmering wail Of some far bird; or, in some flowery swale, A brook that murmurs to the solitudes, Might think he hears the laugh of Vivien Blent with the moan of Merlin, muttering bound By his own magic to one stony spot: And, in the cloud that looms above the glen,-- In which the sun burns like the Table Round,-- Might dream he sees the towers of Camelot.
Meseemed that while she played, while lightly yet Her fingers fell, as roses bloom by bloom, I listened--dead within a mighty room Of some old palace where great casements let Gaunt moonlight in, that glimpsed a parapet Of statued marble: in the arrased gloom Majestic pictures towered, dim as doom, The dreams of Titian and of Tintoret. And then, it seemed, along a corridor, A mile of oak, a stricken footstep came, Hurrying, yet slow.... I thought long centuries Passed ere she entered--she, I loved of yore, For whom I died, who wildly wailed my name And bent and kissed me on the mouth and eyes.