_At first cock-crow_
_The ghosts must go_
_Back to their quiet graves below._
Against the distant striking of the clock
I heard the crowing cock,
And I arose and threw the window wide;
Long, long before the setting of the moon,
And yet I knew they must be passing soon--
My neighbors who had died--
Back to their narrow green-roofed homes that wait
Beyond the churchyard gate.
I leaned far out and waited--all the world
Was like a thing impearled,
Mysterious and beautiful and still:
The crooked road seemed one the moon might lay,
Our little village slept in Quaker gray,
And gray and tall the poplars on the hill;
And then far off I heard the cock--and then
My neighbors passed again.
At first it seemed a white cloud, nothing more,
Slow drifting by my door,
Or gardened lilies swaying in the wind;
Then suddenly each separate face I knew,
The tender lovers drifting two and two,
Old, peaceful folk long since passed out of mind,
And little children--one whose hand held still
An earth-grown daffodil.
And here I saw one pausing for a space
To lift a wistful face
Up to a certain window where there dreamed
A little brood left motherless; and there
One turned to where the unploughed fields lay bare;
And others lingering passed--but one there seemed
So over glad to haste, she scarce could wait
To reach the churchyard gate!
The farrier's little maid who loved too well
And died--I may not tell
How glad she seemed. My neighbors, young and old,
With backward glances lingered as they went;
Only upon one face was all content,
A sorrow comforted--a peace untold.
I watched them through the swinging gate--the dawn
Stayed till the last had gone.