Carol and Cadence :: :: University of Virginia Library

The casements rattle; the wind screams past;
The souls are abroad on the breath of the blast;
Their voices shriek in the shrilling rains;
Their fingers paddle the window-panes.

My cats from the hearthrug raise the head;
They listen awhile to the lilt of the dead:
Their heads, then, shaking, as if “In vain!”
To motion, they fall to sleep again.

154

But the souls of the dead are stirring still;
The air is full of their voices shrill.
Ghost-hands go sweeping the strings of wire;
Ghost-fingers clutch at the climbing fire.

What is it, o dead, ye would with me?
I hear your voices, though nought I see,
Nor aught of your speaking I understand;
For your speech is the speech of the spirit-land.

My dog and my cat your speech comprize;
I read it writ in their gleaming eyes:
The message they catch of your passing-bell;
But they keep their secret and will not tell.

Yet that which ye will with me I guess
And the meaning of this your shrilling stress:
Your crying clamour upon me calls
Come dance with the dead in the shadow-halls.

You will me follow and fare with you
To the land where there's neither old nor new,
The world that is quit of Space and Time,
Where Rest is the word of Life's lacking rhyme.

Nay, ready I were with you to go:
But bond to the body's the soul, heigho!
Till that is weary of stress and strife,
This still must hive in the house of Life.

Yet work (who knows how much?) to do's for the twain;
And till it be ended, ye call in vain.
Who knows when the body (and 'faith, 'tis tough!)
Will lay down its arms and cry “Enough?”

What matter to you if I keep the tryst,
(Whose flesh is dust and whose souls are mist,)
In an hour or a day or an hundred years,
The tryst with you and your shadow-peers?

155

To you are an hour and a year alike:
No clocks in your limboes the centuries strike:
An age is to you of the spirit-land
As a grain of its grains to the desert-sand.

What matter to you for more or less?
Like me, in patience your souls possess!
Go, get you back to the shadow-shore
Nor trouble the live untimely more.

II.

In vain my speech is. My cats lift up
Their heads from the hearth. In a shadow-cup
A shadow-hand pours a shadow-wine
And proffers the bowl to these lips of mine.

Ah would I might drain it, your draught of sleep!
My soul's athirst for your poppied deep
And the juice of the grapes whence your hands express
The drowsy drink of forgetfulness.

Enough have I quaffed of the wine of dreams,
The draught that sunders 'twixt “Is” and “Seems;”
For nought but seeming is Life; and thirst
For that which we know not of all's the worst.

And yet must a sentinel keep his room,
'Spite hunger and thirst, till the crack of doom.
There's none can license him thence go free
Save him who set him, whoever he be.

Though broken he be on Fortune's wheel,
Still true to his troth is the sentry leal:
And Life to the living the soldier's post's,
As well ye know it, ye grieving ghosts.

156

And so to your limboes get you back,
Sad souls! I follow upon your track,—
And seek no more with your clamorous breath
To hasten the flight of the wings of Death.

For he in his own time comes, the churl!
Though old worlds and new worlds about him whirl:
And nought can quicken or clog the pace
Of the Lord of the spheres of Time and Space.