Richard Hunt. Gas-lamp Ghost. Harriet Monroe, ed. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912-22

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22.

Gas-lamp Ghost

By Richard Hunt


OUT of the blue-gray dusk
He comes—
The ghostly one,
The gray one,
Driving his ghostly wagon.	5
Nearer he comes, and nearer,
Silent
Except for his singing flower
That burns a violet hole in the air,
That melts a violet hole in the snowy dusk.	10

He comes with a flower of burning mist
On the tip of a copper stalk;
He comes with a misty flower that sings
And burns a violet hole
In the blue-gray dusk.	15

He touches dark stems in a row,
He tips them with his hot mist-flower,
Stem after stem;
And one by one
They bloom, and glow,	20
And have white flowers on them,
And burn pale blue holes, green ghastly holes,
In the silent air,
In the blue-gray snowy dusk.