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 | The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman |  |
XVIII
1
There 's an hour, at the fall of night, when the blissful soulsOf those who were dear in life seem close at hand;
There 's a holy midnight hour, when we speak their names
In pauses between our songs on the trellised porch;
And we sing the hymns which they loved, and almost know
Their phantoms are somewhere with us, filling the gaps,
The sorrowful chasms left when they passed away;
And we seem, in the hush of our yearning voices, to hear
Their warm, familiar breathing somewhere near.
2
At such an hour,—when again the autumn hazeSilvered the moors, and the new moon peered from the west
Over the blue Passaic, and the mansion shone
Clear and white on the ridge which skirts the stream,—
At the twilight hour a man and a woman sat
On the open porch, in the garb of those who mourn.
57
Silent, and full of the past, they watched the skies.
| The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman | |