A Hidden Life and Other Poems. George MacDonald

      "Ah, speak! am I so frightful then?

        I live; though they call it death;

      I am only cold—say dear again"—

        But scarce could he heave a breath;

      The air felt dank, like a frozen fen,

        And he a half-conscious wraith.

      "Ah, save me!" once more, with a hopeless cry,

        That entered his heart, and lay;

      But sunshine and warmth and rosiness vie

        With coldness and moonlight and grey.

      He spoke not. She moved not; yet to his eye,

        She stood three paces away.

      She spoke no more. Grief on her face

        Beauty had almost slain.

      With a feverous vision's unseen pace

        She had flitted away again;

      And stood, with a last dumb prayer for grace,

        By the window that clanged with rain.

      He stood; he stared. She had vanished quite.

        The loud wind sank to a sigh;

      Grey faces without paled the face of night,

        As they swept the window by;

      And each, as it passed, pressed a cheek of fright

        To the glass, with a staring eye.

      And over, afar from over the deep,

        Came a long and cadenced wail;

      It rose, and it sank, and it rose on the steep

        Of the billows that build the gale.

      It ceased; but on in his bosom creep

        Low echoes that tell the tale.

      He opened his lattice, and saw afar,

        Over the western sea,

      Across the spears of a sparkling star,

        A moony vapour flee;

      And he thought, with a pang that he could not bar,

        The lady it might be.

      He turned and looked into the room;

        And lo! it was cheerless and bare;

      Empty and drear as a hopeless tomb,—

        And the lady was not there;

      Yet the fire and the lamp drove out the gloom,

        As he had driven the fair.

      And up in the manhood of his breast,

        Sprang a storm of passion and shame;

      It tore the pride of his fancied best

        In a thousand shreds of blame;

      It threw to the ground his ancient crest,

        And puffed at his ancient name.

      He had turned a lady, and lightly clad,

        Out in the stormy cold.

      Was she a ghost?—Divinely sad

        Are the guests of Hades old.

      A wandering ghost? Oh! terror bad,

        That refused an earthly fold!

      And sorrow for her his shame's regret

        Into humility wept;

      He knelt and he kissed the footprints wet,

        And the track by her thin robe swept;

      He sat in her chair, all ice-cold yet,

        And moaned until he slept.

      He woke at dawn. The flaming sun

        Laughed at the bye-gone dark.

      "I am glad," he said, "that the night is done,

        And the dream slain by the lark."

      And the eye was all, until the gun

        That boomed at the sun-set—hark!

      And then, with a sudden invading blast,

        He knew that it was no dream.

      And all the night belief held fast,

        Till thinned by the morning beam.

      Thus radiant mornings and pale nights passed

        On the backward-flowing stream.

      He loved a lady with heaving breath,

        Red lips, and a smile alway;

      And her sighs an odour inhabiteth,

        All of the rose-hued may;

      But the warm bright lady was false as death,

        And the ghost is true as day.

      And the spirit-face, with its woe divine,

        Came back in the hour of sighs;

      As to men who have lost their aim, and pine,

        Old faces of childhood rise:

      He wept for her pleading voice, and the shine

        Of her solitary eyes.

      And now he believed in the ghost all night,

        And believed in the day as well;

      And he vowed, with a sorrowing tearful might,

        All she asked, whate'er befel,

      If she came to his room, in her garment white,

        Once more at the midnight knell.

      She came not. He sought her in churchyards old

        That lay along the sea;

      And in many a church, when the midnight tolled,

        And the moon shone wondrously;

      And down to the crypts he crept, grown bold;

        But he waited in vain: ah me!

      And he pined and sighed for love so sore,

        That he looked as he were lost;

      And he prayed her pardon more and more,

        As one who had sinned the most;

      Till, fading at length, away he wore,

        And he was himself a ghost.

      But if he found the lady then,

        The lady sadly lost,

      Or she had found 'mongst living men

        A love that was a host,

      I know not, till I drop my pen,

        And am myself a ghost.