The Gallows

GHOSTS
by Madison Cawein

Low, weed-climbed cliffs, o'er which at noon
The sea-mists swoon:
Wind-twisted pines, through which the crow
Goes winging slow:

Dim fields the sower never sows,
Or reaps or mows:
And near the sea a ghostly house of stone
Where all is old and lone.

A garden, falling in decay,
Where statues gray
Peer, broken, out of tangled weed
And thorny seed;

Satyr and Nymph, that once made love
By walk and grove:
And, near a fountain, shattered, green with mould,
A sundial, lichen-old.

Like some sad life bereft,
To musing left,
The house stands: love and youth
Both gone, in sooth:

But still it sits and dreams:
And round it seems
Some memory of the past, still young and fair,
Haunting each crumbling stair.

And suddenly one dimly sees,
Come through the trees,
A woman, like a wild moss-rose:
A man, who goes

Softly: and by the dial
They kiss a while:
Then drowsily the mists blow round them, wan,
And they like ghosts are gone.