@3At first cock-crow The ghosts must go Back to their quiet graves below.@1 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 his 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. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...IRELAND by WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR ON LAYING THE CORNER-STONE OF THE BUNKER HILL MOMUMENT by JOHN PIERPONT VILLANELLE: AU RETOUR DU PRINTEMPS by PHILIP SCHUYLER ALLEN AUTUMN; WRITTEN IN THE GROUNDS OF MARTIN COLE, ESQ. by BERNARD BARTON AFTER CHURCH by SAMUEL ALFRED BEADLE |