November Night
Listen...
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees
And fall.
Adelaide Crapsey
The Snow-Gardens
Like an empty stage
The gardens are empty and cold;
The marble terraces rise
Like vases that hold no flowers;
The lake is frozen, the fountain still;
The marble walls and the seats
Are useless and beautiful.
Ah, here
Where the wind and the dusk and the snow are
All is silent and white and sad!
Why do I think of you?
Why does your name remorselessly
Strike through my heart?
Why does my soul awaken and shudder?
Why do I seem to hear
Cries as lovely as music?
Surely you never came
Into these pale snow-gardens;
Surely you never stood
Here in the twilight with me;
Yet here I have lingered and dreamed
Of a face as subtle as music,
Of golden hair, and of eyes
Like a child’s...
I have felt on my brow
Your finger-tips, plaintive as music...
O Wonder of all wonders, O Love—
Wrought of sweet sounds and of dreaming!—
Why do you not emerge
From the lilac pale petals of dusk,
And come to me here in the gardens
Where the wind and the snow are?
Beauty and Peace are here—
And unceasing music—
And a loneliness chill and wistful,
Like the feeling of death.
Like a crystal lily a star
Leans from its leaves of silver
And gleams in the sky;
And golden and faint in the shadows
You wait indistinctly,—
Like a phantom lamp that appears
In the mirror of distance that hovers
By the window at twilight—
You have come—and we stand together,
With questioning eyes—
Dreaming and cold and ghostly
In an empty garden that seems
Like an empty stage.
Zoë Akins