All night the moon peered wan and pale
Thro' rifts in a scudding storm-rent veil
O'er a moving mountainous waste.
All night did the climbers rear and roar
And fall with a crash upon the shore,
League on league of them coming in haste
Till they broke and leapt no more,
Leaping and shouting until they broke
Upon the screaming shore.
And the simple hardy fisherfolk
Kept watch and slept no more,
As the wicked wind raved down the street
With gouts of foam and slings of sleet
And battered at every door.
All night the tiles like chips of straw
Were borne, and the air was filled with the roar
Of the monstrous symphony.
But its music lulled as the morning came
And touched the East with a rosy flame,
And whitened a hard clear sky,
And the tide drew out far far to the sea
Which shouted less tumultuously,
Tho' its voices were heard for a sign,
As it beat upon the barrier rocks
With the baffled rage of the Equinox
In a spouting misty line.
X
After a night so fierce and foul
What wonder such a day?
The wind, which shrieked like a tortured soul
Last night across the bay,
Blew high and keen like a violin
And dashed the blue with spray.
After a night so mad and wild
An afternoon of blue,
Of glinting, winking, glad blue waters
And breakers only a few,
Of light and azure undefiled
With scarce a cloud in view.
And at the hour of evening prayer
Came three who roamed the shore,
The sea was older, colder, and greyer,
And moved and murmured more.
Amid the waste of heaven and sea
A body lay alone,
Half in a pool and half on the knee
Of an ancient mossy stone.
The sea had saved a poor little fool
From life and all its harms,
Her body lay in a lonely pool--
Not in a lover's arms.
And on her cheek the mask of peace
And on her lips the smile
Of those who mourn and find release,
Who know, not love, the vile.
The Wraith.
A pale wraith stood in the dim grey dawn
Beside his old love's bed
Wavering like a film of lawn
And wrang his hands and said,
"Oh! I have come to make my prayer
For I cannot take my rest
When I think of the red crown I called your hair
And the cold stone in your breast.
"Out of the eyeless hopeless dark
The nights that are black and grey
Never a moon or faint star-spark
Or a lonely glimmer of day.
Oh! my love, I have come, love,
From the ebony gates of death
For the sake of the red crown I called your hair
And the jasmine of your breath."
But his voice was lost like a mouse's scream
In a lonely empty house,
And the woman lay in a tender dream
Of love and orchard boughs,
Her cheeks were flushed and twice she sighed
As she turned upon her bed
And she had no thought for the thing that cried
Or the utterance of the dead.
The Two Murderers.
"Yes, it was I that killed her
I did it with this knife,
Her that was more to me once....
Well, just the whole of my life.
Take me away and hide me,
Or kill me afore I'm mad....
It's rummy to think of me hanging
Who was such a quiet lad.
"I met her here on the tow-path,
Same as I used in May,
There wasn't no moon yet, only
The scent of the new-mown hay,
And I says--well--I thought for a moment
The happy times was near,
'The light that shineth in darkness
Is the light of your eyes, my dear.'
"Murder! a court full of lawyers....
And justice guaranteed....
And the judge will hang the prisoner
'For a cowardly cruel deed.'...
Murder!--excuse my laughing!...
It's a kind of catch in the breath....
'But there's words more harsh than a rope is
And looks more bitter than death.'
"Murder! My Lud, if ever
Their ledgers are balanced true
Which of the pair?... Oh! I reckon
That she killed something too.
... Is it the scent of a woman's hair
Or the scent of new-mown hay?...
Don't stand there shaking and staring,
For God's sake take me away."