Lii

And still my soul holds phantom tryst, When chestnuts hiss among the coals, Upon the Evening of All Souls, When all the night is moon and mist, And all the world is mystery; I kiss dear lips that death hath kissed, And look in eyes no man may see, Filled with a love long lost to me.

I hear the night-wind’s ghostly glove Flutter the window: then the knob Of some dark door turn, with a sob As when love comes to gaze on love Who lies pale-coffined in a room: And then the iron gallop of The storm, who rides outside, his plume Sweeping the night with dread and gloom.

So fancy takes my mind, and paints The darkness with eidolon light, And writes the deads’ romance in white On the dim Evening of All Saints: Unheard the hissing nuts; the clink Of falling coals, whose shadow faints Around me where I sit and think, Borne far beyond the actual’s brink.