Poems. Howells William Dean

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      And rising from his sleep, her shadowy presence

      Followed his light descent

      Of the long stair; her shadowy evanescence

      Through all the whispering rooms before him went.

      Upon the earthy draught of cellars blowing

      His shivering lamp-flame blue,

      Amid the damp and chill, he felt her flowing

      Around him from the doors he entered through.

      The spiders wove their webs upon the ceiling;

      The bat clung to the wall;

      The dry leaves through the open transom stealing,

      Skated and danced adown the empty hall.

      About him closed the utter desolation,

      About him closed the gloom;

      The vanishing encounter and evasion

      Of things that were and were not in the room

      Vexed him forever; and his life forever

      Immured and desolate,

      Beating itself, with desperate endeavor,

      But bruised itself, against the round of fate.

      The roses, in their slender vases burning,

      Were quenchéd long before;

      A dust was on the rhymes of love and yearning;

      The shawl was like a shroud upon the floor.

      Her music from the thrilling chords had perished;

      The stillness was not moved

      With memories of cadences long cherished,

      The closes of the songs that she had loved.

      But not the less he felt her presence never

      Out of the room depart;

      Over the threshold, not the less, forever

      He felt her going on his broken heart.

      Full of beautiful blossoms

      Stood the tree in early May:

      Came a chilly gale from the sunset,

      And blew the blossoms away;

      Scattered them through the garden,

      Tossed them into the mere:

      The sad tree moaned and shuddered,

      “Alas! the Fall is here.”

      But all through the glowing summer

      The blossomless tree throve fair,

      And the fruit waxed ripe and mellow,

      With sunny rain and air;

      And when the dim October

      With golden death was crowned,

      Under its heavy branches

      The tree stooped to the ground.

      In youth there comes a west-wind

      Blowing our bloom away,–

      A chilly breath of Autumn

      Out of the lips of May.

      We bear the ripe fruit after,–

      Ah, me! for the thought of pain!–

      We know the sweetness and beauty

      And the heart-bloom never again.

      One sails away to sea,

      One stands on the shore and cries;

      The ship goes down the world, and the light

      On the sullen water dies.

      The whispering shell is mute,

      And after is evil cheer:

      She shall stand on the shore and cry in vain,

      Many and many a year.

      But the stately, wide-winged ship

      Lies wrecked on the unknown deep;

      Far under, dead in his coral bed,

      The lover lies asleep.

      Through the silent streets of the city,

      In the night’s unbusy noon,

      Up and down in the pallor

      Of the languid summer moon,

      I wander, and think of the village,

      And the house in the maple-gloom,

      And the porch with the honeysuckles

      And the sweet-brier all abloom.

      My soul is sick with the fragrance

      Of the dewy sweet-brier’s breath:

      O darling! the house is empty,

      And lonesomer than death!

      If I call, no one will answer;

      If I knock, no one will come:

      The feet are at rest forever,

      And the lips are cold and dumb.

      The summer moon is shining

      So wan and large and still,

      And the weary dead are sleeping

      In the graveyard under the hill.

      We looked at the wide, white circle

      Around the Autumn moon,

      And talked of the change of weather:

      It would rain, to-morrow, or soon.

      And the rain came on the morrow,

      And beat the dying leaves

      From the shuddering boughs of the maples

      Into the flooded eaves.

      The clouds wept out their sorrow;

      But in my heart the tears

      Are bitter for want of weeping,

      In all these Autumn years.

      The bobolink sings in the meadow,

      The wren in the cherry-tree:

      Come hither, thou little maiden,

      And sit upon my knee;

      And I will tell thee a story

      I read in a book of rhyme;

      I will but fain that it happened

      To me, one summer-time,

      When we walked through the meadow,

      And she and I were young.

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