The Listeners | Page 6

stone,
Where the green moss sleeps,
Peers at the river in its
deeps,
The eagle lone in the sky,
While the dew of evening drips,


Coldly and silently.
Would that I could press in!--
Into each secret room;
Would that my
sleep-bright eyes could win
To the inner gloom;
Gaze from its high
windows,
Far down its mouldering walls,
Where amber-clear still
Lethe flows,
And foaming falls.
But ever as I gaze,
From slumber soft doth come
Some touch my
stagnant sense to raise
To its old earthly home;
Fades then that sky
serene;
And peak of ageless snow;
Fades to a paling dawn-lit green,

My dark château.
THE DWELLING-PLACE
Deep in a forest where the kestrel screamed,
Beside a lake of water,
clear as glass,
The time-worn windows of a stone house gleamed,
Named only 'Alas.'
Yet happy as the wild birds in the glades
Of that green forest,
thridding the still air
With low continued heedless serenades,
Its heedless people were.
The throbbing chords of violin and lute,
The lustre of lean tapers in
dark eyes,
Fair colours, beauteous flowers, dainty fruit
Made earth seem Paradise
To them that dwelt within this lonely house:
Like children of the gods
in lasting peace,
They ate, sang, danced, as if each day's carouse
Need never pause, nor cease.
Some might cry, Vanity! to a weeping lyre,
Some in that deep pool
mock their longings vain,
Came yet at last long silence to the wire,

And dark did dark remain.
Some to the hunt would wend, with hound and horn,
And clash of
silver, beauty, bravery, pride,
Heeding not one who on white horse
upborne
With soundless hoofs did ride.
Dreamers there were who watched the hours away
Beside a fountain's
foam. And in the sweet
Of phantom evening, 'neath the night-bird's
lay,
Did loved with loved-one meet.
All, all were children, for, the long day done,
They barred the heavy
door 'gainst lightfoot fear;
And few words spake though one known
face was gone,
Yet still seemed hovering near.
They heaped the bright fire higher; poured dark wine;
And in long
revelry dazed the questioning eye;
Curtained three-fold the
heart-dismaying shine
Of midnight streaming by.
They shut the dark out from the painted wall,
With candles dared the
shadow at the door,
Sang down the faint reiterated call
Of those who came no more.
Yet clear above that portal plain was writ,
Confronting each at length
alone to pass
Out of its beauty into night star-lit,
That worn 'Alas!'
THE LISTENERS

'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit
door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the
forest's ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the
Traveller's head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;

'Is there anybody there?' he said.
But no one descended to the
Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and
looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But
only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the
world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and
shaken
By the lonely Traveller's call.
And he felt in his heart their
strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse
moved, cropping the dark turf,
'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For
he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:--

'Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,' he
said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he
spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From
the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly
backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.
TIME PASSES
There was nought in the Valley
But a Tower of Ivory,
Its base
enwreathed with red
Flowers that at evening
Caught the sun's crimson
As to Ocean low
he sped.
Lucent and lovely

It stood in the morning
Under a trackless hill;
With snows eternal
Muffling its summit,
And silence ineffable.

Sighing of solitude
Winds from the cold heights
Haunted its
yellowing stone;
At noon its shadow
Stretched athwart cedars
Whence every bird
was flown.
Its stair was broken,
Its starlit walls were
Fretted; its flowers shone
Wide at the portal,
Full-blown and fading,
Their last faint fragrance
gone.
And on high in its lantern
A shape of the living
Watched o'er a
shoreless sea,
From a Tower rotting
With age and weakness,
Once lovely as
ivory.
BEWARE!
An ominous bird sang from its branch,
'Beware, O Wanderer!
Night
'mid her flowers of glamourie spilled
Draws swiftly near:
'Night with her darkened caravans,
Piled deep with silver and myrrh,

Draws from the portals of the East,
O Wanderer near!
'Night who walks plumèd through the fields
Of stars that strangely
stir--
Smitten to fire by the sandals of him
Who walks with her.'
THE JOURNEY
Heart-sick of his journey was the Wanderer;
Footsore and sad was he;

And a Witch who long had lurked by the wayside,
Looked out of
sorcery.
'Lift up your eyes, you lonely Wanderer,'
She peeped from her
casement small;
'Here's shelter and quiet to give