  Its casements, diamond-disked with glass, Look down upon a terrace old, Where urns, unkempt with ragged grass, Foam o'er with hoary cold. The snow rounds out each stair of stone; The frozen fount is hooped with pearl; Down desolate walks, like phantoms blown, Thin, powdery snow-wreaths whirl. And to each rose-tree's stem, that bends With silvery snow-combs, glued with frost, It seems each summer rosebud sends Its airy, scentless ghost. A stiff Elizabethan pile, With bleakness chattering in its panes, Where, rumbling down each chimney-file, The mad wind shakes his reins. Lone in the northern angle, dim With immemorial dust, it lies; Where each gaunt casement's stony rim Stares eyelike at the skies. Drear in the old pile's oldest wing, Hung round with mouldering arras, where Tall, shadowy Tristrams fight and sing For shadowy Isolts fair. Beside a crumbling cabinet A tarnished lute lies on the floor; A talon-footed chair is set, Grotesquely, near the door. A carven, testered bedstead stands With rusty silks draped all about; And, like a moon in murky lands, A mirror glimmers out. Neglected, locked that chamber, where In dropping arras dimly clings The drowsy moth; and, frightened there, The lost wind sighs and sings Adown the roomy flue, and takes And swings the ghostly mirror till It seems some unseen hand that shakes Its frame then leaves it still. A starving mouse forever gnaws Behind a panel; and the vines, That on the casement tap like claws, Lattice the floor with lines.— I have been there when blades of light Stabbed each dull, stained, and dusty pane; Once I was there at dead of night— I dream of it again.... She grew upon my vision as Heat grows that haunts the summer day; In taffetas, like glimmering glass, She stood there dim and gray. And will-o'-wisp-like jewels bound Faint points of light round neck and wrist; And round her slender waist was wound A zone of silver mist. And icy as some winter land Her pale, still face; o'er which the night Hung of her raven hair; her hand Was beautiful and white. Before the mirror moaningly She wrung her hands and palely pressed Her brow.—And did I dream, or see, That blood was on her breast? And then she vanished.—Like a breath, That o'er the limpid glass had passed, Her presence passed; and cold as death She left me and aghast. Yes, I've been there when spears of light Pierced thro' each stained and sunlit pane; Once I was there at dead of night— I dream of it again. |
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