Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

“It is late, so late, and the lights are out
In the castle overhead,
And the only sounds that move about
Are the wind and the warder's tread.
It is late, my son, and you do not sleep,
But wearily sit and sigh:
Now tell me the vexing thoughts that keep
Sweet slumber from your eye.”

“They will not lie: they fill my soul:
They murmur ever deep:
The echoes, my mother, they rise and roll;
They will not let me sleep.
O the weary sound, with its ebbless flow!
The dead are beyond its reach:
See where they sleep in the churchyard low
Like shells on a sea-beat beach!
They hear it not: nor sigh nor moan
Escapes their narrow bed,

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But each is dreamless as the stone
That presses on his head.
—O I am envious of your mounds
And of your slumbers deep,
For ye do not hear the maddening sounds
That will not let me sleep!”

“Now doubly cold is the wind to me,
And sadder yet its sigh!
And I could weep, my son, with thee,
But the springs of my grief are dry.
It was years ago, on a night like this,
And thou wert but unborn,
I wept and prayed, but all amiss,
Till breaking of the morn.
For the angry winds were all abroad
And thy father on the sea:
—His ship never more the waters rode
And never home came he.
And the selfsame wind that would not hear
The prayers of a tender wife
Now fills a mother's heart with fear
And sickens me of life.—

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But do not talk of death, my son,
And do not heed the wind
That quickens the sad thoughts which run
Destructive o'er thy mind.”

“It is not the wail of the wind, mother,
Nor ocean's stormy roll:
They enter not by outward ear
The sounds that fill my soul.
Music to me were the wildest roar
Of wind and water blent
Could it drown the sounds that evermore
My tortured soul torment.
Yet they are sweet,—they won me first
By the witchery of their tone,
And ere ever I knew to a charm accurst
Had the mystic music grown.
'Tis the clamorous Voice of the Past I hear,
The Sounds of a World gone by,—
The noble speech, and the poem clear,
And the deed divinely high.
All down the ante-rooms of Time
They stream and gather and roll;

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And with hopes to which I may never climb
Their echoes vex my soul.
I know that a music of my own
Their terror-tones might lay,
But what can I, with the wish alone
To do or sing or say?”