PRESENTIMENT.
With saintly grace and reverent tread,
She walked among the graves
with me;
Her every foot-fall seemed
to be
A benediction on the dead.
The guardian spirit of the place
She seemed, and I some ghost
forlorn
Surprised in the untimely
morn
She made with her resplendent face.
Moved by some waywardness of will,
Three paces from the path
apart
She stepped and stood—my
prescient heart
Was stricken with a passing chill.
The folk-lore of the years agone
Remembering, I smiled and
thought:
“Who shudders suddenly
at naught,
His grave is being trod upon.”
But now I know that it was more
Than idle fancy. O, my
sweet,
I did not think such little
feet
Could make a buried heart so sore!
A STUDY IN GRAY.
I step from the door with a shiver
(This fog is uncommonly cold)
And ask myself: What did I give her?—
The maiden a trifle gone-old,
With the head of gray hair
that was gold.
Ah, well, I suppose ’twas a dollar,
And doubtless the change is
correct,
Though it’s odd that it seems so
much smaller
Than what I’d a right
to expect.
But you pay when you dine,
I reflect.
So I walk up the street—’twas
a saunter
A score of years back, when
I strolled
From this door; and our talk was all banter
Those days when her hair was
of gold,
And the sea-fog less searching
and cold.
I button my coat (for I’m shaken,
And fevered a trifle, and
flushed
With the wine that I ought to have taken,)
Time was, at this coat I’d
have blushed,
Though truly, ’tis cleverly
brushed.
A score? Why, that isn’t so
very
Much time to have lost from
a life.
There’s reason enough to be merry:
I’ve not fallen down
in the strife,
But marched with the drum
and the fife.
If Hope, when she lured me and beckoned,
Had pushed at my shoulders
instead,
And Fame, on whose favors I reckoned,
Had laureled the worthiest
head,
I could garland the years
that are dead.
Believe me, I’ve held my own, mostly
Through all of this wild masquerade;
But somehow the fog is more ghostly
To-night, and the skies are
more grayed,
Like the locks of the restaurant
maid.
If ever I’d fainted and faltered
I’d fancy this did but
appear;
But the climate, I’m certain, has
altered—
Grown colder and more austere
Than it was in that earlier
year.
The lights, too, are strangely unsteady,
That lead from the street
to the quay.
I think they’ll go out—and
I’m ready
To follow. Out there
in the sea
The fog-bell is calling to
me.