EARLIER POEMS
Ah me, if they had left a sepulchre;
But no—the light hath changed not, and in it
Of its same colour stir
Spirits I see not but phantasmed feel to flit.
Air, legioned with such, stirreth,
So that I seem to draw them with my breath,
Ghouls that devour each joy they do to death,
Strange glimmering griefs and sorrowing silences
Bearing dead flowers unseen whose charnel smell
Great awe to my sense is
Even in the rose-time when all else is well.
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