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(Ghost-Story)
Out of the storm that muffles shining night
Flash roses ghastly-sweet,
And lilies far too pale.
There is a pang of livid light,
A terror of familiarity,
I see a dripping swirl of leaves and petals
That I once tended happily,
Borders of flattened, frightened little things,
And writhing paths I surely walked in that other life—
Day?
My specter-garden beckons to me,
Gibbers horribly—
And vanishes!
This poem is in the public domain.
It would be easy to forgive,
If I could but remember;
If I could hear, lost love of mine,
The music of your cruelties,
Shaking to sound the silent skies,
Could voice with them their song divine,
Red with pain’s leaping ember:
It would be easy to forgive,
Hope gnawed at my heart like a hungry rat,
Ran in and out of my dreams high-walled,
I heard its scampering feet: “Pretty rat— pretty rat—!” I called,
And crumbled it songs to eat.
Dawn slips within my room to say good-by:
Buffeted, bruised, by autumn rain
All night,
While I lay sleeping, held to dreams, again
She comes from out the violated sky,
Dragging her tarnished light.