Chapter XVII

Looking on the desolate street,
Where the first snow drifts and drives,
Trodden black of hurrying feet,
Where the athlete storm-wind strives
With each tree and dangling light,--
Centres, sphered with glittering white,--
Hissing in the dancing snow ...
Backward in my mind I go
To that tempest-haunted night
Of two autumns past, when we,
Hastening homeward, were o'ertaken
Of the storm; and 'neath a tree,
With its wild leaves tempest-shaken,
Sheltered us in that forsaken,
Sad and ancient cemetery,--
Where folk came no more to bury.--
Haggard gravestones, mossed and crumbled,
Tottered round us, or o'ertumbled
In their sunken graves; and some,
Urned and obelisked above
Iron-fenced-in tombs, stood dumb
Records of forgotten love.
And again I see the west
Yawning inward to its core
Of electric-spasmed ore,
Swiftly, without pause or rest:
And a great wind sweeps the dust
Up abandoned sidewalks; and,
In the rotting trees, the gust
Shouts again--a voice that would
Make its gaunt self understood
Moaning over Death's lean land.--
And we sat there, hand in hand;
On the granite; where we read,
By the instant skies o'erhead,
Something of one young and dead.
Yet the words begot no fear
In our souls: you leaned your cheek
Smiling on mine: very near
Were our lips: we did not speak.

XVIII

And suddenly alone I stood
With scared eyes gazing through the wood,
For some still sign of ill or good
To lead me from the solitude.

The day was at its twilighting;
One cloud o'erhead spread a vast wing
Of rosy thunder; vanishing
Behind the far hills' sullen ring.

Some stars shone timidly o'erhead;
And towards the west's cadaverous red--
Like some wild dream that haunts the dead
In limbo--the lean moon was led.

Upon the sad, debatable
Vague lands of twilight slowly fell
A silence that I knew too well,
A sorrow that I can not tell.

What way to take, what path to go,
Whether into the east's gray glow,
Or where the west burnt red and low--
What way to choose I did not know.

So, hesitating, there I stood
Lost in my soul's uncertain wood;
One sign I craved of ill or good
To lead me from its solitude.