TWO lovers walked in a green garden way
'Neath towering poplar pillars all arow;
The still June midnight close about them lay:
They whispered soft and low.
Though they could feel no wind, they heard it creep
High in the poplars, whispering secret schemes;
The tall trees stood as sentinels asleep,
And listening through their dreams.
The full moon's white fire lamp hung round and fair
Above the highest poplar's shivering crest,
The lazy fountain's waters stirred the air
And softly sank to rest.
Unseen the honeysuckle trailed that fills
The dim air with its heavy sweet perfume,
But the wan fire-eyed wraiths of daffodils
Stared spectral through the gloom.
They felt no footsteps fall beside their own,
But long their like had loved the garden well;
And never two may walk this walk alone:
Their presence wakes a spell.
When here live lovers loiter to and fro
With tender words and lips of kisses fain,
Then those dead men that walked here long ago
Meet their lost loves again.
The grey dew keeps no traces of their feet,
Their speech is lighter than the bat's shrill cry,
They hover where of yore they used to meet
Like shadows passing by.
Though many wander where the moonlight lies
Yet are they lonely as in life they were,
For each ghost looks into his own love's eyes
And sees no other there.
And when the living lips their farewells frame
And the live feet turn to the garden door,
The shades depart in darkness as they came
And are not any more.
Did those two guess who loved that night in June
That others trod the grass as well as they,
And won from them a passing moment's boon
To love as in life's day?
Or did they think in that still haunted place,
As those poor phantoms were they soon must be
And pluck at other unknown lovers' grace
The joys that once were free?
Perchance their glad hearts thrust such thoughts away;
Of that night's tryst no more than this they own:
That they two, in a grassy garden way
Once walked an hour alone.