Ghosts by Margaret Louisa Woods
Where the columned cliffs far out have planted
Their daring shafts in the Northern foam,
There hangs a castle that should be haunted,
A ruin meet for a phantom’s home.
For heavily in the caverns under
The hidden tide like a muffled drum,
Beats distinct through the level thunder
Of the wintry waste whence storm-winds come.
And fire has blackened the mouldering rafter,
And stairs have crumbled from bolted doors;
At night there’s a sound of wail and laughter,
And footsteps crossing the creaking floors.
And in and out through the courts forsaken
Wild shapes are drifted from hall to hall,
With a trumpet sound the towers are shaken,
And banners flutter along the wall.
‘Tis but the storms and the seas enchant it,
Its ghosts are shadow and wind and spray.
If ever a phantom used to haunt it,
That too was mortal and passed away.
The ghosts have found where the hills embosom
A windless garden—they walk at noon,
When the beds and branches burn with blossom,
And hardly wait for the rising moon
When the starry charm of the night is broken
And the day but lives as a child unborn,
They pass with echoes of words once spoken
And silent footsteps and eyes forlorn.
From the blind gray house where all are sleeping
A mocking music sounds wild and clear,
The faint lights glimmer and past them sweeping
The dancers appear and disappear.
And the swinging branches close to cover
The two who tremble there heart to heart,
The ghostly lady and phantom lover,
The souls long parted that cannot part.
They seem as shadows of morn and even,
For ever fading to come again;
They are as shadows of tempest driven,
Stormily sighing across the plain.
For these depart as the rest departed,
The garden under the hill shall be
As ghost-forsaken, as past-deserted
As the castle over the Northern sea.
Darkling, I Listen 