11. Hauntings

IN the grey tumult of these after years

Oft silence falls; the incessant wranglers part;

And less-than-echoes of remembered tears

Hush all the loud confusion of the heart;

And a shade, through the toss’d ranks of mirth and crying

Hungers, and pains, and each dull passionate mood,—

Quite lost, and all but all forgot, undying,

Comes back the ecstasy of your quietude.

So a poor ghost, beside his misty streams,

Is haunted by strange doubts, evasive dreams,

Hints of a pre-Lethean life, of men,

Stars, rocks, and flesh, things unintelligible,

And light on waving grass, he knows not when,

And feet that ran, but where, he cannot tell.

THE PACIFIC, 1914.