The Listeners | Page 6

one who on white horse upborne
With soundless hoofs did ride.
Dreamers there were who watched the hours away?Beside a fountain's foam. And in the sweet?Of phantom evening, 'neath the night-bird's lay,
Did loved with loved-one meet.
All, all were children, for, the long day done,?They barred the heavy door 'gainst lightfoot fear;?And few words spake though one known face was gone,
Yet still seemed hovering near.
They heaped the bright fire higher; poured dark wine;?And in long revelry dazed the questioning eye;?Curtained three-fold the heart-dismaying shine
Of midnight streaming by.
They shut the dark out from the painted wall,?With candles dared the shadow at the door,?Sang down the faint reiterated call
Of those who came no more.
Yet clear above that portal plain was writ,?Confronting each at length alone to pass?Out of its beauty into night star-lit,
That worn 'Alas!'
THE LISTENERS
'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller,?Knocking on the moonlit door;?And his horse in the silence champed the grasses?Of the forest's ferny floor:?And a bird flew up out of the turret,?Above the Traveller's head:?And he smote upon the door again a second time;?'Is there anybody there?' he said.?But no one descended to the Traveller;?No head from the leaf-fringed sill?Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,?Where he stood perplexed and still.?But only a host of phantom listeners?That dwelt in the lone house then?Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight?To that voice from the world of men:?Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,?That goes down to the empty hall,?Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken?By the lonely Traveller's call.?And he felt in his heart their strangeness,?Their stillness answering his cry,?While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,?'Neath the starred and leafy sky;?For he suddenly smote on the door, even?Louder, and lifted his head:--?'Tell them I came, and no one answered,?That I kept my word,' he said.?Never the least stir made the listeners,?Though every word he spake?Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house?From the one man left awake:?Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,?And the sound of iron on stone,?And how the silence surged softly backward,?When the plunging hoofs were gone.
TIME PASSES
There was nought in the Valley?But a Tower of Ivory,?Its base enwreathed with red
Flowers that at evening?Caught the sun's crimson?As to Ocean low he sped.
Lucent and lovely?It stood in the morning?Under a trackless hill;
With snows eternal?Muffling its summit,?And silence ineffable.
Sighing of solitude?Winds from the cold heights?Haunted its yellowing stone;
At noon its shadow?Stretched athwart cedars?Whence every bird was flown.
Its stair was broken,?Its starlit walls were?Fretted; its flowers shone
Wide at the portal,?Full-blown and fading,?Their last faint fragrance gone.
And on high in its lantern?A shape of the living?Watched o'er a shoreless sea,
From a Tower rotting?With age and weakness,?Once lovely as ivory.
BEWARE!
An ominous bird sang from its branch,?'Beware, O Wanderer!?Night 'mid her flowers of glamourie spilled?Draws swiftly near:
'Night with her darkened caravans,?Piled deep with silver and myrrh,?Draws from the portals of the East,?O Wanderer near!
'Night who walks plum��d through the fields?Of stars that strangely stir--?Smitten to fire by the sandals of him?Who walks with her.'
THE JOURNEY
Heart-sick of his journey was the Wanderer;?Footsore and sad was he;?And a Witch who long had lurked by the wayside,?Looked out of sorcery.
'Lift up your eyes, you lonely Wanderer,'?She peeped from her casement small;?'Here's shelter and quiet to give you rest, young man,?And apples for thirst withal.'
And he looked up out of his sad reverie,?And saw all the woods in green,?With birds that flitted feathered in the dappling,?The jewel-bright leaves between.
And he lifted up his face towards her lattice,?And there, alluring-wise,?Slanting through the silence of the long past,?Dwelt the still green Witch's eyes.
And vaguely from the hiding-place of memory?Voices seemed to cry;?'What is the darkness of one brief life-time?To the deaths thou hast made us die?
'Heed not the words of the Enchantress?Who would us still betray!'?And sad with the echo of their reproaches,?Doubting, he turned away.
'I may not shelter 'neath your roof, lady,?Nor in this wood's green shadow seek repose,?Nor will your apples quench the thirst?A homesick wanderer knows.'
'"Homesick," forsooth!' she softly mocked him:?And the beauty in her face?Made in the sunshine pale and trembling?A stillness in that place.
And he sighed, as if in fear, the young Wanderer,?Looking to left and to right,?Where the endless narrow road swept onward,?In the distance lost to sight.
And there fell upon his sense the briar,?Haunting the air with its breath,?And the faint shrill sweetness of the birds' throats,?Their tent of leaves beneath.
And there was the Witch, in no wise heeding;?Her arbour, and fruit-filled dish,?Her pitcher of well-water, and clear damask--?All that the weary wish.
And the last gold beam across the green world?Faltered and failed, as he?Remembered his solitude and the dark night's?Inhospitality.
His shoulders were bowed with his knapsack;?His staff trailed heavy in the dust;?His eyes were dazed, and hopeless of the white road?Which tread all pilgrims must.
And he looked upon the Witch with eyes of sorrow?In the darkening