Haunted Garden by Robin Hyde

The primulas are scanted of colour here,
They are as young lips knowing too little of love;
And the dusky weight of the laurel boughs above
Is a stern crown plaited for young brows lessoned in care.
Yea, and the scarlet shallop anemones
Bend in the wind for the warm white lute-string beach,
For the Orphic meadows no longing of mine can reach,
Who am prisoner here in the warded house of the trees.

But the small white poisonous flowers crumble into my days,
And the steel-bright arc of the fountain-drops pierces my heart.
I am as one who stumbles the yew-tree maze,
Where ever dreamer and dream are thrust further apart,
Till the little pools of starlight shine chill with danger,
Till the breath of the earth is a rising pearl-white smoke,
And he dare not stretch forth his hand, to touch the cloak
Of her who waits by the fountain, the motionless stranger.

And dusk is a statue, and thought is a chrysophrase set
Bleak on a brow half-seen through the leaning blue trees;
And the frail eve weighted by robes of sarcenet
Rests her sceptre of dreaming across her knees.
Heavy her spell upon heart, upon outstretched hands —
Only the ghost-world’s silver freights again
The barren orchard with blossom, limns the tall standing grain,
The watchful glistening spears of enchanted lands.

The Voice by Thomas Hardy

 

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,

Saying that now you are not as you were

When you had changed from the one who was all to me,

But as at first, when our day was fair.
Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,

Standing as when I drew near to the town

Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,

Even to the original air-blue gown!
Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness

Travelling across the wet mead to me here,

You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,

Heard no more again far or near?
Thus I; faltering forward,

Leaves around me falling,

Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,

And the woman calling.

The Voices by James Whitcomb Riley

Down in the night I hear them:
The Voices—unknown—unguessed,—
That whisper, and lisp, and murmur,
And will not let me rest.—

Voices that seem to question,
In unknown words, of me,
Of fabulous ventures, and hopes and dreams
Of this and the World to be.

Voices of mirth and music,
As in sumptuous homes; and sounds
Of mourning, as of gathering friends
In country burial-grounds.

Cadence of maiden voices—
Their lovers’ blent with these;
And of little children singing,
As under orchard trees.

And often, up from the chaos
Of my deepest dreams, I hear
Sounds of their phantom laughter
Filling the atmosphere:

They call to me from the darkness;
They cry to me from the gloom,
Till I start sometimes from my pillow
And peer through the haunted room;

When the face of the moon at the window
Wears a pallor like my own,
And seems to be listening with me
To the low, mysterious tone,—

The low, mysterious clamor
Of voices that seem to be
Striving in vain to whisper
Of secret things to me;—

Of a something dread to be warned of;
Of a rapture yet withheld;
Or hints of the marvelous beauty
Of songs unsyllabled.

But ever and ever the meaning
Falters and fails and dies,
And only the silence quavers
With the sorrow of my sighs.

And I answer:—O Voices, ye may not
Make me to understand
Till my own voice, mingling with you,
Laughs in the Shadow-land.

The Phantom Voice by Sarah Helen Whitman

 

Through the solemn hush of midnight,
How sadly on my ear
Falls the echo of a harp whose tones
I never more may hear!

A wild, unearthly melody,
Whose monotone doth move
The saddest, sweetest cadences
Of sorrow and of love:

Till the burden of remembrance weighs
Like lead upon my heart,
And the shadow, on my soul that sleeps,
Will never more depart.

The ghastly moonlight, gliding
Like a phantom through the gloom,
How it fills with solemn fantasies
My solitary room!

And the sighing winds of Autumn,
Ah! how sadly they repeat
That low, bewildering melody,
So mystically sweet!

I hear it softly murmuring
At midnight o’er the hill,
Or across the wide savannas,
When all beside is still.

I hear it in the moaning
Of the melancholy main;
In the rushing of the night-wind,
The rhythm of the rain.

E’en the wild-flowers of the forest,
Waving sadly to and fro,
But whisper to my boding heart
The burden of its woe.

And the spectral moon, now paling
And fading, seems to say,
“I leave thee to remembrances
That will not pass away.”

Ah, through all the solemn midnight,
How mournful ’t is to hark
To the voices of the silence,
The whisper of the dark!

In vain I turn, some solace
From the distant stars to crave:
They are shining on thy sepulchre,
Are smiling on thy grave.

How I weary of their splendor!
All night long they seem to say,
“We are lonely,—sad and lonely,—
Far away,—far, far away!”

Thus, through all the solemn midnight,
That phantom voice I hear,
As it echoes through the silence,
When no earthly sound is near.

And though dawn-light yields to noon-light,
And though darkness turns to day,
They but leave me to remembrances
That will not pass away.

Night-Blowing Flowers by Felicia Dorothea Hemans

 

Children of night! unfolding meekly, slowly,

To the sweet breathings of the shadowy hours,

When dark-blue heavens look softest and most holy,

And glow-worm light is in the forest bowers;

To solemn things and deep,

To spirit-haunted sleep,

To thoughts, all purified

From earth, ye seem allied,

O dedicated flowers!
Ye, from the gaze of crowds your beauty veiling,

Keep in dim vestal urns the sweetness shrined;

Till the mild moon, on high serenely sailing,

Looks on you tenderly and sadly kind.

So doth love’s dreaming heart

Dwell from the throng apart,

And but to shades disclose

The inmost thought, which glows

With its pure life entwined.
Shut from the sounds wherein the day rejoices,

To no triumphant song your petals thrill,

But send forth odours with the faint, soft voices

Rising from hidden streams, when all is still.

So doth lone prayer arise

Mingling with secret sighs,

When grief unfolds, like you,

Her breast, for heavenly dew

In silent hours to fill.

In Dispraise of the Moon by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

I would not be the Moon, the sickly thing,
To summon owls and bats upon the wing;
For when the noble Sun is gone away,
She turns his night into a pallid day.

She hath no air, no radiance of her own,
That world unmusical of earth and stone.
She wakes her dim, uncolored, voiceless hosts,
Ghost of the Sun, herself the sun of ghosts.

The mortal eyes that gaze too long on her
Of Reason’s piercing ray defrauded are.
Light in itself doth feed the living brain;
That light, reflected, but makes darkness plain.

Night by Ann Radcliffe (from Romance of the Forest)

 

Now Ev’ning fades! her pensive step retires,

And Night leads on the dews, and shadowy hours:

Her awful pomp of planetary fires,

And all her train of visionary powers.
These paint with fleeting shapes the dream of sleep,

These swell the waking soul with pleasing dread;

These through the glooms in forms terrific sweep,

And rouse the thrilling horrors of the dead!
Queen of the solemn thought—mysterious Night!

Whose step is darkness, and whose voice is fear!

Thy shades I welcome with severe delight,

And hail thy hollow gales, that sigh so drear!
When, wrapt in clouds, and riding in the blast,

Thou roll’st the storm along the sounding shore,

I love to watch the whelming billows, cast

On rocks below, and listen to the roar.
Thy milder terrors, Night, I frequent woo,

Thy silent lightnings, and thy meteor’s glare,

Thy northern fires, bright with ensanguine hue,

That light in heaven’s high vault the fervid air.
But chief I love thee, when thy lucid car

Sheds through the fleecy clouds a trembling gleam,

And shews the misty mountain from afar,

The nearer forest, and the valley’s stream:
And nameless objects in the vale below,

That floating dimly to the musing eye,

Assume, at Fancy’s touch, fantastic shew,

And raise her sweet romantic visions high.
Then let me stand amidst thy glooms profound

On some wild woody steep, and hear the breeze

That swells in mournful melody around,

And faintly dies upon the distant trees.
What melancholy charm steals o’er the mind!

What hallow’d tears the rising rapture greet!

While many a viewless spirit in the wind

Sighs to the lonely hour in accents sweet!
Ah! who the dear illusions pleas’d would yield,

Which Fancy wakes from silence and from shades,

For all the sober forms of Truth reveal’d,

For all the scenes that Day’s bright eye pervades!

Haunted Spot by Emma Lazarus

 

The close-twined branches interlock o’erhead,

‘Twixt leaf and leaf no ray, no glimpse of blue;

From the live roof is gray green twilight shed,

Heavily clings at noon the dull chill dew;

The snake-like roots of the large trees break through

The black, moist sod; rank weeds spread everywhere,

Damp shadow and mirk vapors fill the air.
A yellowish pool hath slowly filtered here

From drip and ooze and frequent wash of rains:

No lapse of living waters greets the ear,

Thick crust of slime its sluggish surface stains.

Here Silence dwells — a vague, wild terror gains

The soul before this mystery divine,

Evil in action, evil in design.
The poisoned flower hath overwrought the brain.

The wood seems peopled with strange images,

Huge forms uncouth in slow unending train,

Life’s terrors and its nameless miseries,

Now like a sullen mist between the trees,

Now close and threatening, distinct and near,

While hateful discords grate upon the ear.
Sin, madness, poverty, disease and age,

And, halting last, the unmixed evil, death.

How near to her they come, life’s heritage

Of ancient ills! No outlet openeth:

Her wild cry echoes far above, beneath,

Fills the thick air with trouble, wanes and dies,

Meeting the hollow earth and empty skies.

Haunted Hour by Leah Bodine Drake

 

The sky is coloured like a peacock’s breast;

There lingers yet one thin, chill line of gold

Down where the woods their somber branches hold

In silhouette against the fading west.

Dark leaves, dark earth, slow-breathing and at rest,

Whence frail scents rise of dew-wet grass and mold.

A single star gleams diamond-clear and cold,

Like one sharp note from angel viol wrest.
This is the haunted hour — such woods surround

Grey Merlin in his oak, adrouse with dwale;

In such a gloaming once the lorn knight found

The faery woman in the river-vale;

And underneath this star long, long ago

The Dark Tower heard a lonely slug-horn blow!

The Dusk Folk by Robin Hyde

 

We are the oldest people, who have watched the world change.

Sun-glow and star pass by us, and these are no longer strange;

Nor is it strange when the moonrise, with delicate pointed hands,

Gathers our thoughts like blossoms, and binds them with crystal bands.

We are the folk of twilight. The ways of our going are clear

As the little lattice of fire traced on the frosty mere;

Silver the locks of our hair, but deep are our hidden eyes

As the black tarn in the crags, where a quivering water lies.

We are the wings of a dream that brushed you in sleep, and was gone,

The silver fruits of the isle you have hungered to look upon;

We are the thought of your heart, and the shadowy shrill

Ghost of challenge that rises from the throat of the daffodil.