Page:Weird Tales Volume 10 Number 5 (1927-11).djvu/133

Rh It stands alone on a haunted shore, With curious words of a deathless lore
 * On its massive gate empearled;

And its carefully-guarded, mystic key Hideth its solemn mystery
 * From the seeking eyes of the world.

And pictures out of each haunted room Up through the ghostly shadows loom
 * And gleam with a spectral light;

Pictures lit with a radiant glow, And some that image such desolate wo
 * That weeping you turn from the sight.

And oft do its stately walls repeat Echoes of music wildly sweet,
 * Swelling to gladness high;

With mournful ballads of ancient time, And funeral hymns—and a nursery rime,
 * Dying away in a sigh.

And oft in the silence of midnight air You hear on its stately winding-stair
 * The echoes of fairy feet;

Gentle footsteps, that lightly fall Through the enchanted castle-hall
 * And up in the golden street.

And still in a dark, forsaken tower, Crowned with a withered cypress-flower,
 * Is a bowed head turned away;

A face like carvèd marble white, Sweet eyes drooping away from the light,
 * Shunning the eye of day.

Mysteries strange its still walls keep; Strange are the crowds that through it sweep,
 * Walking by night and day;

But evermore will the castle-hall Echo their footsteps’ phantom fall,
 * Till its walls shall crumble away.