Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/651

 1850-60.] WILLIAM W. HARNEY. 635 THE STAB. THE SUICIDE. On the joad, the lonely road, The night was cold, the wind was chill, Under the cold white moon, The very air seemed frozen still. Under the ragged trees he strode ; And snowy caps lay on the hill, He whistled and shifted his weary load — In pure and spotless white ; Whistled a foolish tune. The icy stars lay on the sky ; The frozen moon went sailing by, There was a step timed with his own. With baleful, livid lighL A figure that stooped and bowed — A cold, white blade that gleamed and The leafless tree, with whitened limb shone. Stood, like a specter lean and grim, Like a splinter of daylight downward Upon the darkened river's brim, thrown — A moveless sentinel ! And the moon went behind a cloud. And waters turbulent and vast. Went swiftly boiling, eddying past, But the moon came out so broad and good, Adown the inky swell. The barn fowl woke and crowed ; Then roughed his feathers in drowsy mood. The twigs with tracery of white, And the brown owl called to his mate in And tapestry of curtained night. the wood. With fringe of strange, phosphoric light. That a dead man lay on the road. Bowed idly to the moon ; Anon, across the silent wood, The owl would break the solitude With wild and awful tune ! No hurrying wheel or beating tread THE BURIED HOPE. Disturbed the sleeper in his bed, But earth and all on earth seemed dead, Fold down its little baby hands — And frozen in their graves ; This was a hope you had of old ; The moon seemed that All-Seeing eye. Fillet the brow with rosy bands, That watched the waters whirling by And kiss its locks of shining gold. In black and silent waves. Somewhere within the reach of years, Another hope may come, like this ; Near where the wrinkled waters fell, But this poor babe is gone, in tears, A woman — oh ! such tales to tell — With thin white lips, cold to thy kiss. Lay, like a frozen Christabel, Upon the river's brim. In Summer, a little heap of flowers, Ah ! was it so ? or had I dreamed ? In Winter, a little drift of snow, Yet so 1 saw, or so it seemed, And this is all, through all the hours, By that cold light and dim. Of the promised, perished long ago. So every heart has one dear grave, And fearfully I drew a-nigh. Close hidden under its joy or care, With opened lip, and staring eye, Till o'er it the gusts of memory wave. And trembling limbs — I knew not why — And leave the little head-stone bare. Unto the darkened spot.