Chapter IV

There by the stagnant pool he stands,
A foxfire lamp in flickering hands;
The weeds are slimy to the tread,
And mockingly, and gloatingly,
With slanted eyes and pointed head,
He leans above a face long dead,--
The face of me! of me! of me!

REVISITED

It was beneath a waning moon when all the woods were sear,
And winds made eddies of the leaves that whispered far and near,
I met her on the bramble bridge we parted at last year.

At first I deemed her but a mist that faltered in that place,
An autumn mist beneath the trees the moon's thin beams did lace,
Until I neared and in the moon beheld her face to face.

The crinkle of the summer heat above the drouth-burnt leas;
The shimmer of the thistle-drift adown the silences;
The gliding of the fairy-fire between the swamp and trees:

All qualified her presence as a sorrow may a dream--
The vague suggestion of a self; the glimmer of a gleam;
The actual and unreal of the things that are and seem.

Where once she came with welcome and glad eyes, all loving-wise,
She passed, and gave no greeting that my heart could recognize,
With far, set face, unseeing, and sad, unremembering eyes.

It was beneath a waning moon when woods were bleak and sear,
And winds made whispers of the leaves that eddied far and near,
I met her ghost upon the bridge we parted at last year.

THE OLD HOUSE

Quaint and forgotten, by an unused road,
An old house stands: around its doors the dense
Rank ironweeds grow high;
The chipmunks make a highway of its fence;
And on its sunken flagstones newt and toad
As still as lichens lie.

The timid snake upon its hearth's cool sand
Sleeps undisturbed; the squirrel haunts its roof;
And in the clapboard sides
Of closets,--dim with many a spider woof,--
Like the uncertain tapping of a hand,
The beetle-borer hides.

Above its lintel, under mossy eaves,
The mud-wasps build their cells; and in the floor
Of its neglected porch
The black bees nest: through each deserted door,
Vague as faint, phantom footsteps, steal the leaves
And dropped cones of the larch.

But come with me when sunset's magic old
Transforms this ruin--yea! transmutes this house:
When windows, one by one,--
Like Age's eyes, that Youth's love-dreams arouse,--
Grow lairs of fire; and a mouth of gold
Its wide door towards the sun.

Or let us wait until each rain-stained room
Is carpeted with moonlight, patterned oft
With shadow'd boughs o'erhead;
And through the house the wind goes rustling soft,
As might the ghost--a whisper of perfume--
Of some sweet girl long dead.

THE FOREST OF DREAMS

I

Where was I last Friday night?--
Within the Forest of dark Dreams
Following the blur of a goblin light,
That led me over dreadful streams,
Whereon the scum of the spawn was spread,
And the blistered slime, in stagnant seams;
Where the weed and the moss swam black and dead,
Like a drowned girl's hair, in the ropy ooze:
And the jack-o'-lantern light that led
Flickered the foxfire trees o'erhead,
And the owl-like things at airy cruise.

II

Where was I last Friday night?--
Within the Forest of dark Dreams
Following a form of shadowy white
With my own wild face it seems.--
Did a raven's wing just fan my hair?
Or a web-winged bat brush by my face?
Or the hand of--something I did not dare
Look round to see in that obscene place!
Where the boughs, with their leaves a-devil's-dance,
And the thorn-tree bush, where the wind made moan,
Had more than a strange significance
Of life and of evil not their own.