University of Virginia Library

Here suddenly he rose, and stood
Close by the window in dreamy mood.
The snow had ceased to fall, and lay
White o'er all the level reach,
White to the sand-dunes and the beach
Where the tumbling breakers fell,
And what was snow, and what was spray,
It was hard for the eye to tell.
The broad white moon was hurrying swift,
Trailing her pale skirts over the drift
Of the flying clouds; and through a rift,
Here and there, in the distance far,
He caught the gleam of a throbbing star;
And away to the north was a band of light,
That wavered like the sheen of spears
Swaying about in some ghostly fight—
For all was ghostly in that wan night,
And the shadows passed like fears—
Wan the moon looked, and wan the cloud,
And wan the earth in its snowy shroud.
So, as he gazed, his eyes grew dim,
And moon and stars were hid from him
By some strange mist, and then the mist
Shaped itself into forms, I wist:
And he saw his old home, 'neath the wooded hill,
Between the bridge and the red-roofed mill,
And the village near it, sleepy and still.
O'er the high pine-tops the clouds were creeping,
And all the heavens were grey and cold;
And he was aware that Death was there,
For amid the hush was a sound of weeping,
And as it were muffled, the kirk bell tolled.
Was it the bell?—or only the boom
Of the waves that mixed with his dreamy thought?
Whose face was that in the darkened room?
The features changed in the shadowy gloom,
But the passionless calm, it changèd not.
Sometimes, he thought it was his own;
Sometimes, it had his mother's look;
And his quivering lip gave a low, faint moan
At the pathos of its still rebuke.—
Had he broken her heart by the way he took?
Then Austen; Can this be a dream I am dreaming;
Yet I see the clouds drifting o'erhead, the moon gleaming
On the cold hard blue of the sea, and the stars—
Lo! yonder the Pleïades, yonder red Mars;
But they seem to shine in through an oak-panelled ceiling
Which is solid and real, with a weird, alien feeling,
As if they were the shadows, and it alone true.
Or was it the shadow of Fate that I saw
On my old mother's home, with a chill sense of awe?
She is not what she was, and her letters have strange
Longings of late in them, hinting of change.
She used to be hard, though as true as the steel,
And is not one to utter the half she may feel;
Now she'd fain have me with her, is weary alone
In the wild winter evenings; and ere she is gone
There is so much to say; yet I must not let that,
Or the thought of her, hinder the work I am at.
That's not like her, somehow; its mild, mellow light
Is soft as the gloaming that fades into night;
Yet here have I been adding shadows of sin
To the shadow of death she is walking in;
Help me, O God, that my life may yet prove
True to Thy thought, and the hope of her love.