“Is there anybody there?” said the Traveller,
  Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
  Of the forest’s ferny floor: 
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
  Above the Traveller’s head: 
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
  “Is there anybody there?” he said. 
But no one descended to the Traveller;
  No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
  Where he stood perplexed and still. 
But only a host of phantom listeners
  That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
  To that voice from the world of men: 
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
  That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
  By the lonely Traveller’s call. 
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
  Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
  ’Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
  Louder, and lifted his head:—­
“Tell them I came, and no one answered,
  That I kept my word,” he said. 
Never the least stir made the listeners,
  Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
  From the one man left awake: 
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
  And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
  When the plunging hoofs were gone.

TIME PASSES

    There was nought in the Valley
    But a Tower of Ivory,
Its base enwreathed with red
    Flowers that at evening
    Caught the sun’s crimson
As to Ocean low he sped.

    Lucent and lovely
    It stood in the morning
Under a trackless hill;
    With snows eternal
    Muffling its summit,
And silence ineffable.

    Sighing of solitude
    Winds from the cold heights
Haunted its yellowing stone;
    At noon its shadow
    Stretched athwart cedars
    Whence every bird was flown.

    Its stair was broken,
    Its starlit walls were
Fretted; its flowers shone
    Wide at the portal,
    Full-blown and fading,
Their last faint fragrance gone.

    And on high in its lantern
    A shape of the living
Watched o’er a shoreless sea,
    From a Tower rotting
    With age and weakness,
    Once lovely as ivory.

BEWARE!

An ominous bird sang from its branch,
    “Beware, O Wanderer! 
Night ’mid her flowers of glamourie spilled
    Draws swiftly near: 

“Night with her darkened caravans,
    Piled deep with silver and myrrh,
Draws from the portals of the East,
    O Wanderer near.”

“Night who walks plumed through the fields
    Of stars that strangely stir—­
Smitten to fire by the sandals of him
    Who walks with her.”