Page:Poems of Sentiment and Imagination.djvu/35

Rh And a shuddering fear thrilled through my veins

As I listened the night-wind's tone;

And as it sighed in my unbound hair,

I smothered a whispered moan.

But the vision that rose in the yellow air

Held my shuddering senses still;

I could not speak, or breathe, or stir,

But a damp and deathly chill

Bound with its icy grasp my heart,

That it could not even thrill.

A ghostly form, with silver hair

Flowing down to his feet,

And a face so dark, and withered, and wild,

And eyes that I dared not meet—

So stony and cold they looked on me

From brows as white as sleet.

"Shall I show thee life?" he spoke at length,

But I answered not for fear;

And a mocking smile played on his face,

So withered, and wild, and sere;

And I closed my eyes for a moment, till

That look should disappear.

But when I looked, in its wonted tide

My blood flowed fast and free;

And almost without knowing why

I laughed in my careless glee;

And naught at all of the strange old man

Could my happy vision see.

I seemed to stand on that moonlit bank

With a form on either side,

Of friends I had known in girlhood's days

Ere either the world had tried—

Of a girl in her earliest loveliness,

And a boy in youth's first pride.