Eidolons

The white moth-mullein brushed its slim Cool, fairy flowers against his knee; In places where the way lay dim The branches, arching hollowly, Made tomb-like mystery for him.

The wild-rose and the elder, drenched With rain, made pale a misty place,-- From which, as from a ghost, he blenched; He walking with averted face, And lips white-closed and teeth tight-clenched.

For far within the forest,--where Weird shadows stood like phantom men, And where the ground-hog dug its lair, The she-fox whelped and had her den,-- The thing kept calling, buried there.

One dead trunk, like a ruined tower, Dark green with toppling trailers, shoved Its wild wreck o’er the brush; one bower Looked like a dead man, capped and gloved, The thing that haunted him each hour.

Now at his side he heard it: thin As echoes of a thought that speaks In sleep: and, listening with his chin Upon his palm, unto his cheeks He felt the moon’s slow silver win.

And now the voice was still: and lo, With eyes that stared on naught but night, He looked and saw--what none shall know! The form of one, who long from sight Had lain, here murdered long ago?...

And men who found him,--thither led By the she-fox,--within that place Saw in his stony eyes, ’tis said, The thing he met there face to face, The thing that left him staring dead.