Viii

The storm is heard sounding wildly outside with wind and hail:

The night is wild with rain and sleet; Each loose-warped casement claps or groans: I hear the plangent woodland beat The tempest with long blatant moans, Like one who fears defeat.

And sitting here beyond the storm, Alone within the lonely house, It seems that some mesmeric charm Holds all things--even the gnawing mouse Has ceased its faint alarm.

And in the silence, stolen o’er Familiar objects, lo, I fear-- I fear--that, opening yon door, I ’ll find my dead self standing near, With face that once I wore.

The stairway creaks with ghostly gusts: The flue moans; all its gorgon throat One wail of winds: ancestral dusts,-- Which yonder Indian war-gear coat With gray, whose quiver rusts,--

Are shaken down.--Or, can it be, That he who wore it in the dance, Or battle, now fills shadowy Its wampumed skins? and shakes his lance And spectral plume at me?--

Mere fancy!--Yet those curtains toss Mysteriously as if some dark Hand moved them.--And I would not cross The shadow there, that hearthstone’s spark, A glow-worm sunk in moss.

Outside ’t were better!--Yes, I yearn To walk the waste where sway and dip Deep, dark December boughs--where burn Some late last leaves, that drip and drip No matter where you turn.

Where sodden soil, you scarce have trod, Fills oozy footprints--but the blind Night there, though like the frown of God, Presents no fancies to the mind, Like those that have o’erawed.--

The months I count: how long it seems Since summer! summer, when with her, When on her porch, in rainy gleams We watched the flickering lightning stir In heavens gray as dreams.

When all the west, a sheet of gold, Flared,--like some Titan’s opened forge,-- With storm; revealing, manifold, Vast peaks of clouds with crag and gorge, Where thunder-torrents rolled.

Then came the wind: again, again Storm lit the instant earth--and how The forest rang with roaring rain!-- We could not read--where is it now?-- That tale of Charlemagne:

That old romance! that tale, which we Were reading; till we heard the plunge Of distant thunder sullenly, And left to watch the lightning lunge, And storm-winds toss each tree.

That summer!--How it built us there, Of sorcery and necromance, A mental-world, where all was fair; A land like one great pearl, a-trance With lilied light and air.

Where every flower was a thought; And every bird, a melody; And every fragrance, zephyr brought, Was but the rainbowed drapery Of some sweet dream long sought.

’Mid which we reared our heart’s high home, Fair on the hills; with terraces, Vine-hung and wooded, o’er the foam Of undiscovered fairy seas, All violet in the gloam.

O land of shadows! shadow-home, Within my world of memories! Around whose ruins sweeps the foam Of sorrow’s immemorial seas, To whose dark shores I come!

How long in your wrecked halls, alone With ghosts of joys must I remain? Between the unknown and the known, Still hearing through the wind and rain My lost love moan and moan.