Hallowe’En

It was down in the woodland on last Hallowe’en, Where silence and darkness had built them a lair, That I felt the dim presence of her, the unseen, And heard her still step on the hush-haunted air.

It was last Hallowe’en in the glimmer and swoon Of mist and of moonlight, where once we had sinned, That I saw the gray gleam of her eyes in the moon, And hair, like a raven, blown wild on the wind.

It was last Hallowe’en where starlight and dew Made mystical marriage on flower and leaf, That she led me with looks of a love, that I knew Was dead, and the voice of a passion too brief.

It was last Hallowe’en in the forest of dreams, Where trees are eidolons and flowers have eyes, That I saw her pale face like the foam of far streams, And heard, like the night-wind, her tears and her sighs.

It was last Hallowe’en, the haunted, the dread, In the wind-tattered wood, by the storm-twisted pine, That I, who am living, kept tryst with the dead, And clasped her a moment who once had been mine.