Poems (Greenwell)/Haunted Ground
HAUNTED GROUND."It is the soul that sees."
The rest have wandered on— Stay thou with me, dear friend, awhile, awhile; The air is full of voices, leading on, As o'er enchanted isle.
This ground is writ all o'er With the soul's history; I may not choose—Spell-bound—but pause above this living lore To linger and to muse.
We give of what we take From life of outward things; our spirits leave, Where they have been, a glory in their wake More bright than they receive.
And this was once my Home: The leaves, light rustling o'er me, whisper clear—"The sun but shines on thee where thou dost roam, It smiled upon thee here." [1]
And these are of the things That God hath taken from me, safe ,to keep; Sometimes to let me look on them, He brings Them to me in my sleep;
And I have been in sleep So oft among them, now their aspect seems The vague soft glow evanishing, to keep, Of half-remembered dreams.
Thou shouldst have been with me Of old, dear friend, as now! and borne a part In all that was—then Life were filled with thee As wholly as the Heart!
Then hadst thou won mine eyes My soul to look through; half it augers me To think a sweetness on the years can rise That is not mixed with Thee!
Yet stoop with me to trace These olden records, overrun with bloom; The Dead are underneath, and yet the place Looks hardly like a tomb.
This is the wood-walk; oft I feel a clasp detaining—not the fold Of clinging bindweed—far more close and soft, For here in days of old
My earliest friend with me Walked hand in hand; we sat long hours upon This bank; and I am on the earth, but she Had wings, and she is gone.
See! see! the ancient hall With sunset on it! Now the windows flame In evening light—they flash and glitter all— And one looks still the same
As when my mother kept Upon me, while I played, an eye of love; Since then, it oft has watched me while I wept, Still watching, from above!
As then she used to smile, And softly stroke my head; so now my heart These gentle memories stroke and soothe—awhile, Awhile we will not part.
Kind shadows! from the door. At noon-day with a joyous shout flung wide, I see the merry children rush, before Its welcome stroke had died.
The old domestic, grey And bowed with weight of many years, whose look And grave kind smile still followed on the way Our flying footsteps took;
Such wealth was his in store Of loving words—when fain lie would be stern And chide our rovings, all his speech the more To tenderness would turn!
As twilight brings a face Drawn faint, yet perfect, on the darkening wail; So on me rise the spirits of each place, Yet bring not gloom withal.
Heaven's wasted wealth, the gold It gave for treasure slighted and ungraced,Earth's kindly seeds of love on soil too cold Let darkly run to waste,
That needed but our care To bloom for ever round the heart serene; These, these the forms of evil things that were, Of good that might have been.
Time gathers silently, Yet from their ashes troubling phantoms sends More stern than these of happy hours gone by, Than these of buried friends;
More sad than these that smile And whisper, "Now thou comest as a guest Where once thou dwelt—yet mourn not thou the while, Because thou hast been blest?"
- ↑ The idea that the sun shines on us in absence, but smiles on us at home, is borrowed from a German Song.