| |
| THE ROUGH north-winds have left their icy caves | |
| To growl and group for prey | |
| Upon the murky sea; | |
| The lonely sea-gull skims the sullen waves | |
| All the gray winter day. | 5 |
| |
| The mottled sand-bird runneth up and down, | |
| Amongst the creaking sedge, | |
| Along the crusted beach; | |
| The time-stained houses of the sea-walled town | |
| Are tottering on its edge. | 10 |
| |
| An ancient dwelling, in this ancient place, | |
| Stands in a garden drear, | |
| A wreck with other wrecks; | |
| The past is there, but no one sees a face | |
| Within, from year to year. | 15 |
| |
| The wiry rose-trees scratch the window-pane, | |
| The window rattles loud; | |
| The wind beats at the door, | |
| But never gets an answer back again, | |
| The silence is so proud. | 20 |
| |
| The last that lived there was an evil man; | |
| A child the last that died | |
| Upon the mother’s breast. | |
| It seemed to die by some mysterious ban; | |
| Its grave is by the side | 25 |
| |
| Of an old tree, whose notched and scanty leaves | |
| Repeat the tale of woe, | |
| And quiver day and night, | |
| Till the snow cometh, and a cold shroud weaves, | |
| Whiter than that below. | 30 |
| |
| This time of year a woman wanders there— | |
| They say from distant lands: | |
| She wears a foreign dress, | |
| With jewels on her breast, and her fair hair | |
| In braided coils and bands. | 35 |
| |
| The ancient dwelling and the garden drear | |
| At night know something more: | |
| Without her foreign dress | |
| Or blazing gems, this woman stealeth near | |
| The threshold of the door. | 40 |
| |
| The shadow strikes against the window-pane; | |
| She thrusts the thorns away: | |
| Her eyes peer through the glass, | |
| And down the glass her great tears drip, like rain, | |
| In the gray winter day. | 45 |
| |
| The moon shines down the dismal garden track, | |
| And lights the little mound; | |
| But when she ventures there, | |
| The black and threatening branches wave her back, | |
| And guard the ghastly ground. | 50 |
| |
| What is the story of this buried past? | |
| Were all its doors flung wide, | |
| For us to search its rooms, | |
| And we to see the race, from first to last, | |
| And how they lived and died:— | 55 |
| |
| Still would it baffle and perplex the brain, | |
| But teach this bitter truth: | |
| Man lives not in the past: | |
| None but a woman ever comes again | |
| Back to the house of Youth! | 60 |
| |
