Only the faint-echoing fall of my feet
Sounded in the empty street,
Where noisily an hour or so ago
The townpeople wandered—men, all sorts and types,
Swinging leisurely to and fro,
Laughing and lounging, pulling at their pipes;
Big-featured women; boys with caps aslant
To hint them men of the world; slim girls with scant
White summer dresses that in dubious light
Fluttered and gleamed to the sight
Like pallid moth-wings.
Now the populous street
Was empty: not a phantom lingered there,
Not a ghost of sound on the air
Save, as I passed, for my echoing feet.
The moon was hidden; hardly a candle shone
At any upper window, and the stars
Were dim as candles: from the shops and bars
[Pg 57] The glimmer of light was gone.
A few arc-lamps at intervals threw
Mock moonlight on the mimic waterway
Of the wheel-burnished road;
And the road lay
Cool and rejoicing, lightened of its load
Of travelling life—as a tired face may lie
Smooth of its furrows, the unquiet day
Forgotten, the importunity
Of thought and emotion folded away
And shuttered off by Sleep.
Only my footsteps sounded in the road.
Suddenly I stopped. For I felt a faint light creep
Up to me and touch me, and lo, behind a cloud-veil
The harvest Moon gradually climbing the ascent
To the open firmament!
The vapours like lit foam
Dripped and glittered, as I watched her battle against the tide,
Then huddled again more close and strove to hide
[Pg 58] Her scattering silver with dull monochrome;
Yet with a final stroke did she prevail,
Unflinching out of the stormy water sail,
Astonish the dark night, and roam
Splendid in triumph on her ocean-home.
And, as I watched, it seemed
My eyes were nothing but hollows filled to the brim with light,
And my body was unsubstantial, and the flood unearthly streamed
Through and through me, body and soul, immovable, absorbed in sight.
Along the sombre rank
Of ordinary houses the lustre spread
Until their level surfaces showed blank
And staring-white, and dead.
No longer now as images of Sleep
Could I feel them, folding away
In recesses deep
The voices and the passing feet of day:
Rather I felt them solid, cold, intense,
Shining on the glass of my moonlit sense
[Pg 59] Like naked tombstones. They seemed to me
The only reality:
My conscious being
Was from its centre all
Diverted to its outward wall,
From the thinking and willing soul to the touching, seeing,
Receptive surface. I lost
All sense of separation. I was one
With the tomblike stone.
The bar of my humanity I crossed,
Drawn outward as the houses drew more near,
Till they and I for body had only a gleaming wall,
For spirit a vague fear.
The pulse of Time stopped.
There was no sound
Anywhere,
No motion in the street around,
In my soul’s eclipse I could not stir.
[Pg 60]
Yet some hidden impulse suddenly broke the spell,
For inward, inward, struggling through the barrier
Of my dumb sense I drove. I smote the silent bell
At the door of my heart angrily, bidding it answer me
With a semblance of actual sound. Driven by the tyranny
Of tangible outward horror into my soul I fought,
Striving to win the images that dwell
In the quiet inmost rooms of intricate-carven thought.
There I conjured a vision of summer’s ripe content,
Gold corn in the valley, gold gorse on the hill,
The gold sun shining, the air full of scent,
The common turf paved with gold tormentil;
The air basking lazily, full of the sound of bees,
And a slow stream washing the boughs of trailing willow-trees.
[Pg 61]
There I found a garden where tall hollyhocks
And double-flowered larkspurs towered side by side,
Groups of slender columbine and crimson-hearted phlox,
Old-fashioned lavender and pink and London pride:
And in that close and quiet garden did I find
The faces of my dearest friends, intimate and kind.
But a hurry of other faces like a shadow-show,
Faces remote and strange, crowded unbidden before me,
Faces at first I did not know ...
Yet some of them bore me
Manifest hate or love,—gazing on me
As a familiar friend or enemy.
Gradually I felt the answering passions stir
And days forgotten from a buried past rise;
Gradually
Like objects with pale outlines whitening the gloom
Of a dark room,
[Pg 62] Out of a misty blurr
The faces grew familiar to my eyes.
And yet, as I dimly knew
With a dazed, half-conscious knowing,
These images coming and going,—
These faces old and young
That grew
In a moment, unfolded
And faded,—out of a past that never was mine were sprung:
Not mine, although they so remoulded me
Under their strong control
That memory seemed to be slowly drawn up out of my soul
To join them and make them a part
Of my own years,
Linking them to the passions of my heart,
Old hopes and old fears.
In a while shone out
Distinct among them all, beneath a rout
Of dusky hair, one face
Of quick eager impulsive grace;
And memory arose in me till I burned
With a full-kindled fire
[Pg 63] Of worship and love, seeing no failure, no flaw
In her loveliness....
then memory turned,
Memory and the strength of desire,
To hate, fierce hate, hate fiercer for a memory of shame,
Of a wrong that I had done to her. I saw
With different eyes her beauty and I hated it.
Darkness and agony were in me: I shook: I bit on my lip; there was dew
Of sweat on my hand, on my forehead; I knew
My soul no longer was mine but lit with the flame
Of alien passions, possessing me, driving me ...
Emptily,
Emptily on either side the motionless line
Of tomblike houses gaped upon me—
Their emptiness spoke, they gave me an answer, they told
That only the cold
Bodies of those who slept
Lay in their hold:
[Pg 64] The hot unsleeping passions were abroad
Thronging the white road,
Pressing around me, into me. They had crept
Deep into me more subtle than sleep;
My soul was strangled: I could not shake them off: I struggled in vain ...
But with a saving throb of pain
The power of motion came to me again,
And down the length of that echoing street of dread,
While the beautiful mockery of the white moon still looked down
On the sleeping town,
Quick in the stillness I fled.
