Poems (Greenwell)/Haunted Ground

by Dora Greenwell

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?"

1. The idea that the sun shines on us in absence, but smiles on us at home, is borrowed from a German Song.