  At eve the fiery sun went forth Flooding the clouds with ruby blood, Up roared a war-wind from the north And crashed at midnight through the wood. The demons danced about the trees, The snow slipped singing over the wold, And ever when the wind would cease A lynx cried out within the cold. A spirit walked the ringing rooms, Passing the locked and secret door, Heavy with divers ancient dooms, With dreams dead laden to the core. ‘Spirit, thou art too deep with woe, I have no harbour place for thee, Leave me to lesser griefs, and go, Go with the great wind to the sea. I faltered like a frightened child, That fears its nurse’s fairy brood, And as I spoke, I heard the wild Wind plunging through the shattered wood. ‘Hast thou betrayed the rest of kings, With tragic fears and spectres wan, My dreams are lit with purer things, With humbler ghosts, begone, begone.’ The noisy dark was deaf and blind, Still the strange spirit strayed or stood, And I could only hear the wind Go roaring through the riven wood. ‘Art thou the fate for some wild heart, That scorned his cavern’s curve and bars, That leaped the bounds of time and art, And lost thee lingering near the stars?’ It was so still I heard my thought, Even the wind was very still, The desolate deeper silence brought The lynx-moan from the lonely hill. ‘Art thou the thing I might have been, If all the dead had known control, Risen through the ages’ trembling sheen, A mirage of my desert soul?’ The wind rushed down the roof in wrath, Then shrieked and held its breath and stood, Like one who finds beside his path, A dead girl in the marish wood. ‘Or have I ceased, as those who die And leave the broken word unsaid, Art thou the spirit ministry That hovers round the newly dead?’ The auroras rose in solitude, And wanly paled within the room, The window showed an ebon rood, Upon the blanched and ashen gloom. I heard a voice within the dark, That answered not my idle word, I could not choose but pause and hark, It was so magically stirred. It grew within the quiet hour, With the rose shadows on the wall, It had a touch of ancient power, A wild and elemental fall; Its rapture had a dreaming close: The dawn grew slowly on the wold, Spreading in fragile veils of rose, In tender lines of lemon-gold. The world was turning into light, Was sweeping into life and peace, And folded in the fading night, I felt the dawning sink and cease. |
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