Some dismal nights there are when spirits walk
Who lived and died unhappy in their time,
To waste the air with vows and whispered talk
Of tarnished love or hate or secret crime—
But now the moon moves splendid through the sky;
The night is brilliant like a silver shield;
And in their cavalcades come riding by
The mighty dead of many a tented field.
On this one night at least of all the year
The lists are set again, the lines are drawn;
Again resounds the clang of horse and spear;
The sweet applause of ladies, till the dawn
Makes glad the souls of vizored knights—then they,
Hearing that seneschal, the cock, all troop away.