The Haunted Hour | Page 6

the latch?To-night, and many a one is fain?To go home for one night's watch?With his love again.
Oh, where the father and mother sit?There's a drift of dead leaves at the door?Like pitter-patter of little feet?That come no more.
Their thoughts are in the night and cold,?Their tears are heavier than the clay,?But who is this at the threshold?So young and gay?
They are come from the land o' the young,?They have forgotten how to weep;?Words of comfort on the tongue,?And a kiss to keep.
They sit down and they stay awhile,?Kisses and comfort none shall lack;?At morn they steal forth with a smile?And a long look back.
ALL-SAINTS' EVE: LIZETTE WOODWORTH REESE
Oh, when the ghosts go by,?Under the empty trees,?Here in my house I sit and cry,?My head upon my knees!
Innumerable, white,?Like mist they fill the square;?The bolt is drawn, the latch made tight,?The shutter barréd there.
There walks one small and glad,?New to the churchyard clod;?My little lad, my little lad,?A single year with God!
I sit and hide my head?Until they all are past,?Under the empty trees the dead?That go full soft and fast.
Up to my chamber dim,?Back to my bed I plod;?Oh, would I were a ghost with him,?And faring back to God!
A DREAM: WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
I heard the dogs howl in the moonlight night;?I went to the window to see the sight;?All the dead that ever I knew?Going one by one and two by two.
On they pass'd and on they pass'd;?Townsfellows all, from first to last;?Born in the moonlight of the lane,?Quench'd in the heavy shadow again.
Schoolmates, marching as when they play'd?At soldiers once--but now more staid;?Those were the strangest sight to me?Who were drown'd, I knew, in the open sea.
Straight and handsome folk, bent and weak, too;?Some that I loved, and gasp'd to speak to;?Some but a day in their churchyard bed;?Some that I had not known were dead.
A long long crowd--where each seem'd lonely,?Yet of them all there was one, one only,?Raised a head or looked my way;?She linger'd a moment--she might not stay.
How long since I saw that fair pale face!?Ah! Mother dear! might I only place?My head on thy breast, a moment to rest,?While thy hand on my tearful cheek were press'd!
On, on, a moving bridge they made?Across the moon-stream, from shade to shade,?Young and old, women and men;?Many long-forgot, but remember'd then,
And first there came a bitter laughter;?A sound of tears a moment after,?And then a music so lofty and gay,?That every morning, day by day,?I strive to recall it if I may.
THE NEIGHBORS: THEODOSIA GARRISON
At first cock-crow?The ghosts must go?Back to their quiet graves below.
Against the distant striking of the clock?I heard the crowing cock,?And I arose and threw the window wide;?Long, long before the setting of the moon,?And yet I knew they must be passing soon--?My neighbors who had died--?Back to their narrow green-roofed homes that wait?Beyond the churchyard gate.
I leaned far out and waited--all the world?Was like a thing impearled,?Mysterious and beautiful and still:?The crooked road seemed one the moon might lay,?Our little village slept in Quaker gray,?And gray and tall the poplars on the hill;?And then far off I heard the cock--and then?My neighbors passed again.
At first it seemed a white cloud, nothing more,?Slow drifting by my door,?Or gardened lilies swaying in the wind;?Then suddenly each separate face I knew,?The tender lovers drifting two and two,?Old, peaceful folk long since passed out of mind,?And little children--one whose hand held still?An earth-grown daffodil.
And here I saw one pausing for a space?To lift a wistful face?Up to a certain window where there dreamed?A little brood left motherless; and there?One turned to where the unploughed fields lay bare;?And others lingering passed--but one there seemed?So over glad to haste, she scarce could wait?To reach the churchyard gate!
The farrier's little maid who loved too well?And died--I may not tell?How glad she seemed. My neighbors, young and old,?With backward glances lingered as they went;?Only upon one face was all content,?A sorrow comforted--a peace untold.?I watched them through the swinging gate--the dawn?Stayed till the last had gone.
A BALLAD OF HALLOWE'EN: THEODOSIA GARRISON
All night the wild wind on the heath?Whistled its song of vague alarms;?All night in some mad dance of death?The poplars tossed their naked arms.
Mignon Isa hath left her bed?And bared her shoulders to the blast;?The long procession of the dead?Stared at her as it passed.
"Oh, there, methinks, my mother smiled,?And there my father walks forlorn,?And there the little nameless child?That was the parish scorn.
"And there my olden comrades move,?And there my sister smiles apart,?But nowhere is the fair, false love?That bent and broke my heart.
"Oh, false in life, oh, false in death,?Wherever thy mad spirit be,?Could it not come this night," she saith,?"And keep tryst with me?"
Mignon Isa has turned alone,?Bitter the pain and long the years;?The moonlight on the old gravestone?Was warmer than her tears.
All night the wild