The poems of Madison Cawein :: :: University of Virginia Library

PRÆTERITA

I

Low belts of rushes ragged with the blast;
Lagoons of marish reddening with the west;
And o'er the marsh the water-fowl's unrest
While daylight dwindles and the dusk falls fast.
Set in sad walls, all mossy with the past,
An old stone gateway with a crumbling crest;
A garden where death drowses manifest;
And in gaunt yews the shadowy house at last.
Here, like an unseen spirit, silence talks
With echo and the wind in each gray room
Where melancholy slumbers with the rain:
Or, like some gentle ghost, the moonlight walks
In the dim garden, which her smile makes bloom
With all the old-time loveliness again.

II

When slow the twilight settles o'er its roof,
And from the haggard oaks unto its door
The rain comes, wild as one who rides before

His enemies that follow, hoof to hoof;
And in each window's gusty curtain-woof
The rain-wind sighs, like one who mutters o'er
Some tale of love and crime; and, on the floor,
The sunset spreads red stains as bloody proof:—
From hall to hall and haunted stair to stair,
Through all the house, a dread, that drags me to'ard
The ancient dusk of that avoided room,
Wherein she sits with ghostly golden hair,
And eyes that gaze beyond her soul's sad doom,
Waking the ghost of that old harpsichord.