Strange Paths – Darkling, I Listen

Silent Hill by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Anne says she dreams sometimes – and so do I
About the child we saw go by.
In the late afternoon we saw her pass,
Slowly and without a sound. The deep grass
Bent before her, as where a soft wind goes.
Except we know that no wind ever blows
The dark deep grass on Silent Hill.

My grandma says that back before her day,
There was a fine house there upon the crest
Where now a blackened chimney leans to rest
Against the sky. And now and then nearby,
Like a leaf of ash, a dark bird drifts without a cry.
Nothing else goes there. No boy climbs up to play.
Even the wild deer seem to keep away.
But Anne is not afraid. And sometimes we go near
To listen to the soft hush, deep as fear,
Heavy smoke, that seems to hang there still,
Where only dreams walk now – on Silent Hill.

Anne says she dreams sometimes – and so do I –
About the child we saw go by,
On Silent Hill.

The Frightened Path by Abbie Farwell Brown

The wood grew very quiet

As the road made a sudden turn;

Then a wavering, furtive path crept out

From the tangled briar and fern.
“Where does it lead?” I asked the child;

She shivered and shook her head.

“It doesn’t lead to any place,

It is running away!” she said.
“It is running away on tiptoe

Through the untrodden grass,

To join the cheerful highroad,

Where real, live people pass.
“It runs from a heap of ruins

Where a home stood in old days;

But nothing living goes there now,

And — Nothing Living stays!”

The Lost Path by Elinor Wylie

The garden’s full of scented wallflowers,
And, save that these stir faintly, nothing stirs;
Only a distant bell in hollow chime
Cried out just now for far-forgotten time,
And three reverberate words the great bell spoke.
The knocker’s made of brass, the door of oak,
And such a clamor must be loosed on air
By the knocker’s blow that knock I do not dare.
The silence is a spell, and if it break,
What things, that now lie sleeping, will awake?
II.

Are simple creatures lying there in cool
Sweet linen sheets, in slumber like the pool
Of moonlight white as water on the floor?
Will they come down laughing and unlock the door?
And will they draw me in, and let me sit
On the tall settle while the lamp is lit?
And shall I see their innocent clean lives
Shining as plainly as the plates and knives,
The blue bowls, and the brass cage with its bird?

III.

But listen! listen! surely something stirred
Within the house, and creeping down the halls
Draws close to me with sinister footfalls.
Will long pale fingers softly lift the latch,
And lead me up, under the osier thatch,
To a little room, a little secret room,
Hung with green arras picturing the doom,
The most disastrous death of some proud knight?
And shall I search the room by candle-light
And see, behind the curtains of my bed,
A murdered man who sleeps as sleep the dead?
IV.

Or will my clamorous knocking shake the trees
With lonely thunder through the stillnesses,
And then lie down–the coldest fear of all–
To nothing, and deliberate silence fall
On the house deep in the silence, and no one come
To door or window, staring blind and dumb?