Red Wings by Winifred Virginia Jackson
I hear the shadows moving among old trees;
I see cold, white mists face new ecstasies;
And I, a thing of tears
And fears.
I hear the dead feet travel in a row;
I see the torn leaves falling where they go;
And I, a sleeping stone
Age blown.
I hear the red winds of the west arise;
I see strange, wide and watchful, waiting eyes;
And I, a thing of dust
In trust.
The House of Silence by Thomas Hardy
That is a quiet place –
That house in the trees with the shady lawn.“
”–If, child, you knew what there goes on
You would not call it a quiet place.
Why, a phantom abides there, the last of its race,
And a brain spins there till dawn.“
“But I see nobody there, –
Nobody moves about the green,
Or wanders the heavy trees between.”
“–Ah, that’s because you do not bear
The visioning powers of souls who dare
To pierce the material screen.
“Morning, noon, and night,
Mid those funereal shades that seem
The uncanny scenery of a dream,
Figures dance to a mind with sight,
And music and laughter like floods of light
Make all the precincts gleam.
“It is a poet’s bower,
Through which there pass, in fleet arrays,
Long teams of all the years and days,
Of joys and sorrows, of earth and heaven,
That meet mankind in its ages seven,
An aion in an hour.”
When the Gloom is on the Glen by William Makepeace Thackeray
When the moonlight’s on the mountain
And the gloom is on the glen,
At the cross beside the fountain
There is one will meet thee then.
At the cross beside the fountain;
Yes, the cross beside the fountain,
There is one will meet thee then!
I have braved, since first we met, love,
Many a danger in my course;
But I never can forget, love,
That dear fountain, that old cross,
Where, her mantle shrouded o’er her—
For the winds were chilly then—
First I met my Leonora,
When the gloom was on the glen.
Many a clime I’ve ranged since then, love,
Many a land I’ve wandered o’er;
But a valley like that glen, love,
Half so dear I never sor!
Ne’er saw maiden fairer, coyer,
Than wert thou, my true love, when
In the gloaming first I saw yer,
In the gloaming of the glen!
Mid-Forest Fear by Roderic Quinn
She is standing at the gate,
Tall and sweet,
And although the hour be late
She will greet
Me, her lover,
Smiling over
Absent mind and tardy feet.
‘Rest,’ I’ll say to her, ‘and more rest,’
As she wraps her love around me,
And I’ll tell her of the forest,
Of the strange, fear-haunted forest
Where the fleshless beings found me.
For I trod a rock-strewn rude way
Thinking only of my lover,
When the moonlight on the woodway,
Made a weird-way of the woodway,
And a place where demons hover.
For the leaves that had been sleeping
On the sodden soil-bed lying,
Look a motion and ’gan creeping,
Like a thousand small feet creeping,
And there rose a distant sighing.
Why the trees did droop their tresses,
Weeping leaves for something under,
And what bode in dim recesses,
Feline-lurked in dim recesses,
Paled my cheeks and heart to ponder.
Had I feet I would have hurried,
But the moonlit forest chained me,
Soul and body grasped and worried,
With frost-fingers gripped and worried,
Till, half-stayed, my hurt heart pained me.…
‘Rest,’ I’ll say, ‘my Love, and more rest;
Things unseen have life and motion
And they haunt the moonlit forest—
Soul-affronting haunt the forest,
And men meet them on the ocean.’
She will look so grave and kind,
Saying ‘Rest—
Rest is here for heart and mind
On this breast—
Put aside all
Fancies idle,
I will shield you—Love is best.’
Superstition: An Ode by Ann Radcliffe
High mid Alverna’s awful steeps,
Eternal shades, and silence dwell,
Save, when the gale resounding sweeps,
Sad strains are faintly heard to swell:
Enthron’d amid the wild impending rocks.
Involv’d in clouds, and brooding future woe,
The demon Superstition Nature shocks,
And waves her Sceptre o’er the world below.
Around her throne, amid the mingling glooms,
Wild—hideous forms are slowly seen to glide;
She bids them fly to shade earth’s brightest blooms,
And spread the blast of Desolation wide.
See! in the darkened air their fiery course!
The sweeping ruin settles o’er the land,
Terror leads on their steps with madd’ning force,
And Death and Vengeance close the ghastly band!
Mark the purple streams that flow!
Mark the deep empassioned woe!
Frantic Fury’s dying groan!
Virtue’s sigh, and Sorrow’s moan!
Wide—wide the phantoms swell the loaded air
With shrieks of anguish—madness and despair!
Cease your ruin! spectrs dire!
Cease your wild terrific sway!
Turn your steps—and check your ire,
Yield to peace and mourning day!“
Haunted by Siegfried Sassoon
Evening was in the wood, louring with storm.
A time of drought had sucked the weedy pool
And baked the channels; birds had done with song.
Thirst was a dream of fountains in the moon,
Or willow-music blown across the water
Leisurely sliding on by weir and mill.
Uneasy was the man who wandered, brooding,
His face a little whiter than the dusk.
A drone of sultry wings flicker’d in his head.
The end of sunset burning thro’ the boughs
Died in a smear of red; exhausted hours
Cumber’d, and ugly sorrows hemmed him in.
He thought: ‘Somewhere there’s thunder,’ as he strove
To shake off dread; he dared not look behind him,
But stood, the sweat of horror on his face.
He blunder’d down a path, trampling on thistles,
In sudden race to leave the ghostly trees.
And: ‘Soon I’ll be in open fields,’ he thought,
And half remembered starlight on the meadows,
Scent of mown grass and voices of tired men,
Fading along the field-paths; home and sleep
And cool-swept upland spaces, whispering leaves,
And far off the long churring night-jar’s note.
But something in the wood, trying to daunt him,
Led him confused in circles through the thicket.
He was forgetting his old wretched folly,
And freedom was his need; his throat was choking.
Barbed brambles gripped and clawed him round his legs,
And he floundered over snags and hidden stumps.
Mumbling: ‘I will get out! I must get out!’
Butting and thrusting up the baffling gloom,
Pausing to listen in a space ‘twixt thorns,
He peers around with peering, frantic eyes.
An evil creature in the twilight looping,
Flapped blindly in his face. Beating it off,
He screeched in terror, and straightway something clambered
Heavily from an oak, and dropped, bent double,
To shamble at him zigzag, squat and bestial.
Headlong he charges down the wood, and falls
With roaring brain–agony–the snap’t spark–
And blots of green and purple in his eyes.
Then the slow fingers groping on his neck,
And at his heart the strangling clasp of death.
Haunted by Dora Sigerson Shorter
How restless are the dead whose silent feet will stray
In to our lone retreat or solitary way;
Within the dew-wet wood or sun-enchanted lane
We meet them face to face, we hear them speak again.
How powerful are the dead whose voices ever speak,
So softly by our side in accents faint and weak:
They bid us go or stay, or do, or leave undone,
We hear them breathe our name ere dawn has well begun.
How silent are the dead when come accusing fears
To chide our aching hearts, to fill our days with tears:
They hush not now our grief, nor heed us as we plead
For some unspoken word, or some ungentle deed.
Beside the golden fire they take the empty chair
They tread from room to room, they pass from stair to stair,
And when comes tranquil night to call to us to sleep
Within our pleasant dreams the restless dead will creep.
How pitiless the dead who come in dearest guise
And most belovéd ways before our wistful eyes;
To cry to us lost words that we remembered not,
To act again each scene that we had half forgot.
And should we seek to ease our heart with some caress
How timidly they fly and leave us loneliness:
How fugitive the dead who at our stricken call
Hide in the chilly tomb and answer not at all.
The Return by Mary C. Landon
Light all the lamps in the windows:
I shall not come home.
I shall stay out here with the wind.
I want to roam.
Leave all the doors in the house wide:
I shall pass them by.
I am going up on a hill
And watch the sky.
Pile up the wood in the fireplace,
And then let it flare:
I am going where I can feel
The rain in my hair.
Just before dawn I came creeping,
Cold and wet and thin;
I knocked and called, but no one came:
O, let me in!
In the mist and the rain I met you by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
In the mist and the rain I met you,
—Scarcely I saw your face.
The buffeting wind beset you,
—And robbed you of your grace.
——My arms went round thee,
——My love found thee
———A resting place.
Therefore the sun at morning
—Is not so dear.
I cherish the wild warning
—Of love, not fear,
——That comes with rain crying
——And wind sighing,
———“She is here!”
On A Heath by Thomas Hardy
I could hear a gown-skirt rustling
Before I could see her shape,
Rustling through the heather
That wove the common’s drape,
On that evening of dark weather
When I hearkened, lips agape.
And the town-shine in the distance
Did but baffle here the sight,
And then a voice flew forward:
“Dear, is’t you? I fear the night!”
And the herons flapped to norward
In the firs upon my right.
There was another looming
Whose life we did not see’
There was one stilly blooming
Full nigh to where walked we ;
There was a shade entombing
All that was bright of me.
Darkling, I Listen 