HALLOWE’EN

There is an old Italian legend which says that on the eve of the beloved festival of All Saints (Hallowe’en) the souls of the dead return to earth for a little while and go by on the wind.  The feast of All Saints is followed by the feast of the dead, when for a day only the sound of the Miserere is heard throughout the cities of Italy.

Hark!  Hark to the wind!  ’Tis the night, they say,
When all souls come back from the far away—­
The dead, forgotten this many a day!

And the dead remembered—­ay! long and well—­
And the little children whose spirits dwell
In God’s green garden of asphodel.

Have you reached the country of all content, 0 souls we know, since the day you went From this time-worn world, where your years were spent?

Would you come back to the sun and the rain,
The sweetness, the strife, the thing we call pain,
And then unravel life’s tangle again?

I lean to the dark—­Hush!—­was it a sigh? 
Or the painted vine-leaves that rustled by? 
Or only a night-bird’s echoing cry?

THE GLEANER

As children gather daisies down green ways
  Mid butterflies and bees,
To-day across the meadows of past days
  I gathered memories.

I stored my heart with harvest of lost hours—­
  With blossoms of spent years;
Leaves that had known the sun of joy, and hours
  Drenched with the rain of tears.

And perfumes that were long ago distilled
  From April’s pink and white,
Again with all their old enchantment, filled
  My spirit with delight.

From out the limbo where lost roses go
  The place we may not see,
With all its petals sweet and half-ablow,
  One rose returned to me.

Where falls the sunlight chequered by the shade
  On meadows of the past,
I gathered blossoms that no sun can fade
  No winter wind can blast.

THE ROVER

Though I follow a trail to north or south,
  Though I travel east or west,
There’s a little house on a quiet road
  That my hidden heart loves best;
And when my journeys are over and done,
  ’Tis there I will go to rest.

The snows have bleached it this many a year;
  The sun has painted it grey;
The vines hold it close in their clinging arms;
  The shadows creep there to stay;
And the wind goes calling through empty rooms
  For those who have gone away.

But the roses against the window-pane
  Are the roses I used to know;
And the rain on the roof still sings the song
  It sang in the long ago,
When I lay me down to sleep in a bed
  Little and white and low.

It is long since I bid it all good-bye,
  With young light-hearted disdain;
I remember who stood at the door that day;
  Her tears fell fast as the rain;
And I whistled a tune and waved my hand,
  But never went back again.