Whenever I go by there nowadays
And look at the rank weeds and the strange grass,
The torn blue curtains and the broken glass,
I seem to be afraid of the old place;
And something stiffens up and down my face,
For all the world as if I saw the ghost
Of old Ham Amory, the murdered host,
With his dead eyes turned on me all aglaze.
The Tavern has a story, but no man
Can tell us what it is. We only know
That once long after midnight, years ago,
A stranger galloped up from Tilbury Town,
Who brushed, and scared, and all but overran
That skirt-crazed reprobate, John Evereldown.
I knew her for a little ghost
That in my garden walked;
The wall is high--higher than most--
And the green gate was locked.
And yet I did not think of that
Till after she was gone--
I knew her by the broad white hat,
All ruffled, she had on.
By the dear ruffles round her feet,
By her small hands that hung
In their lace mitts, austere and sweet,
Her gown's white folds among.
I watched to see if she would stay,
What she would do--and oh!
She looked as if she liked the way
I let my garden grow!
I think I should have loved you presently,
And given in earnest words I flung in jest;
And lifted honest eyes for you to see,
And caught your hand against my cheek and breast;
And all my pretty follies flung aside
That won you to me, and beneath your gaze,
Naked of reticence and shorn of pride,
Spread like a chart my little wicked ways.
I, that had been to you, had you remained,
But one more waking from a recurrent dream,
Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained,
And walk your memory's halls, austere, supreme,
A ghost in marble of a girl you knew
Who would have loved you in a day or two.
I STRUCK you once, I do remember well.
Hard on the track of passion sorrow sped,
And swift repentance, weeping for the blow ;
I struck you once — and now you're lying dead !
Now you are gone the blow no longer sleeps
In your forgiveness hushed through all the years ;
But like a phantom haunts me through the dark,
To cry, " You gave your own beloved tears."
Stript now of all excuses, stern and stark.
With all your small transgressings dimmed or fled,
The ghost returns the blow upon my heart.
I struck you once — and now you're lying dead.
He wrote upon his heart
As on the door of some dark ancient house:
Who once lived here has long been dead
As dead as moss-grown stone
Only a ghost inhabits here
One that would be alone
Only a ghost inhabits here
A ghost without desire
Who sits before a shadowed hearth
And warms to a spectral fire....
Lend me, a little while, the key
That locks your heavy heart, and I'll give you back —
Rarer than books and ribbons and beads bright to see,
This little Key of Dreams out of my pack.
The road, the road, beyond men's bolted doors,
There shall I walk and you go free of me,
For yours lies North across the moors,
And mine South. To what sea ?
How if we stopped and let our solemn selves go by,
While my gay ghost caught and kissed yours, as ghosts don't do,
And by the wayside this forgotten you and I
Sat, and were twenty-two ?
Give me the key that locks your tired eyes,
And I will lend you this one from my pack,
Brighter than coloured beads and painted books that make men wise
Take it. No, give it back !
Black with a batter of mud
Stippled with silvery pools
Stands the pavement at the street-end;
And the gutter snow is gone
From cobble and runnelling curb;
And no longer the ramping wind
Is rattling the rusty signs;
And moted and soft and misty
Hangs the sunlight over the cross-streets,
And the home-bound crowds of the city
Walk in a flood of gold.
And suddenly out of the dusk
There comes the ancient question:
Can it be that I have lived
In earlier worlds unknown?
Or is it that somewhere deep
I WISH you'd a farm on the hills, my Dear,
And need not work for hire.
For though I'm cold in the churchyard here.
And cannot sit by your fire,
I'd walk the paths of your house, some nights,
And haply look into your room:
Then I'd always see my Love's home-lights
When I stood on the rail of my tomb.
See ! He trails his toes
Through the long streaks of moonlight.
And the nails of his fingers glitter :
They claw and flash among the tree-tops.
His lips suck at my open window.
And his breath creeps about my body
And lies in pools under my knees.
I can see his mouth sway and wobble.
Sticking itself against the window-jambs.
But the moonlight is bright on the floor,
Without a shadow.
Hark ! A hare is strangling in the forest.
And the wind tears a shutter from the wall.
There is a mirror in my room
Less like a mirror than a tomb,
There are so many ghosts that pass
Across the surface of the glass.
When in the morning I arise
With circles round my tired eyes,
Seeking the glass to brush my hair
My mother's mother meets me there.
If in the middle of the day
I happen to go by that way,
I see a smile I used to know —
My mother, twenty years ago.
But when I rise by candlelight
To feed my baby in the night,
Then whitely in the glass I see
My dead child's face look out at me.
Have you seen Angélique,
What way she went?
A white robe she wore,
A flickering light near spent
Her pale hand bore.
Have you seen Angélique?
Will she know the place
Dead feet must find,
The grave-cloth on her face
To make her blind?
Have you seen Angélique. . . .
At night I hear her moan,
And I shiver in my bed;
She wanders all alone,
She cannot find the dead.
Listen . . .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.