Now hither, now thither, now heavenward flew,
Wild-winged as the winds are:  now suddenly drew

My soul to abysses of nothingness where
All light was a shadow, all hope, a despair: 

Where truth, that religion had set upon high,
The darkness distorted and changed to a lie: 

And dreams of the beauty ambition had fed
Like leaves of the autumn fell blighted and dead.

And I rose with my burden of anguish and doom,
And cried, “O my God, had I died in the womb!

“Than born into night, with no hope of the morn,
An heir unto shadows, to live so forlorn!

“All effort is vain; and the planet called Faith
Sinks down; and no power is real but death.

“Oh, light me a torch in the deepening dark
So my sick soul may follow, my sad heart may mark!”—­

And then in the darkness the answer!—­It came
From Earth not from Heaven—­a glimmering flame,

Behold, at my feet!  In the shadow it shone
Mysteriously lovely and dimly alone: 

An ember; a sparkle of dew and of glower;
Like the lamp that a spirit hangs under a flower: 

As goldenly green as the phosphorus star
A fairy may wear in her diadem’s bar: 

An element essence of moonlight and dawn
That, trodden and trampled, burns on and burns on.

And hushed was my soul with the lesson of light
That God had revealed to me there in the night: 

Though mortal its structure, material its form,
The spiritual message of worm unto worm.

Ghosts

Was it the strain of the waltz that, repeating
“Love,” so bewitched me? or only the gleam
There of the lustres, that set my heart beating,
Feeling your presence as one feels a dream?

For, on a sudden, the woman of fashion,
Soft at my side in her diamonds and lace,
Vanished, and pale with reproach or with passion,
You, my dead sweetheart, smiled up in my face.

Music, the nebulous lights, and the sifting
Fragrance of women made amorous the air;
Born of these three and my thoughts you came drifting,
Clad in dim muslin, a rose in your hair.

There in the waltz, that followed the lancers,
Hard to my breast did I crush you and hold;
Far through the stir and the throng of the dancers
Onward I bore you as often of old.

Pale were your looks; and the rose in your tresses
Paler of hue than the dreams we have lost;—­
“Who,” then I said, “is it sees or who guesses,
Here in the hall, that I dance with a ghost?”

Gone!  And the dance and the music are ended. 
Gone!  And the rapture dies out of the skies. 
And, on my arm, in her elegance splendid,
The woman of fashion smiles up in my eyes.

Had I forgotten? and did you remember?—­
You, who are dead, whom I cannot forget;
You, for whose sake all my heart is an ember
Covered with ashes of dreams and regret.