Can I forget how, when you stood
'Mid orchards whence the bloom had fled,
Stars made the orchards seem a-bud,
And weighed the sighing boughs o'erhead
With shining ghosts of blossoms dead?
Or when you bowed, a lily tall,
Above your drowsy lilies, slim,
Transparent pale, that by the wall
Like cups of moonlight seemed to swim,
Brimmed with faint fragrance to the brim?
And in the cloud that lingered low--
A silent pallor in the west--
There stirred and beat a golden glow,
Like some great heart that could not rest,
A heart of gold within its breast.
Your heart, your soul were in the wild:
You loved to hear the whippoorwill
Lament its love, when, dewy mild,
The harvest scent made musk the hill.
You loved to walk, where oft had trod
The red deer, o'er the fallen hush
Of Fall's torn leaves, when th' ivy-tod
Hung frosty by each berried bush.
Still do the whippoorwills complain
Above your listless lilies, where
The moonlight their white faces stain;
Still flows the dreaming streamlet there,
Whispering of rest an easeful air....
O music of the falling rain,
At night unto her painless rest
Sound sweet not sad! and make her fain
To feel the wildflowers on her breast
Lift moist, pure faces up again
To breathe a prayer in fragrance blessed.
Thick-pleated beeches long have crossed
Old, gnarly arms above her tomb,
Where oft I sit and dream her ghost
Smiles, like a blossom, through the gloom;
Dim as a mist,--that summer lost,--
Of tangled starbeam and perfume.