Classic Poem

At first cock-crow
The ghosts must go
Back to their quiet graves below.
A GAINST the distant striking of the clock
I heard the crowing cock,
— And I arose and threw the window wide;
— — Long, long before the setting of the moon,
— — And yet I knew they must be passing soon —
— My neighbors who had died —
Back to their narrow green-roofed homes that wait
Beyond the churchyard gate.

I leaned far out and waited — all the world
Was like a thing impearled,
— Mysterious and beautiful and still:
— — The crooked road seemed one the moon might lay,
— — Our little village slept in Quaker gray,
— And gray and tall the poplars on the hill;
And then far off I heard the cock — and then
My neighbors passed again.

At first it seemed a white cloud, nothing more,
Slow drifting by the door,
— Or gardened lilies swaying in the wind;
— — Then suddenly each separate face I knew,
— — The tender lovers drifting two and two,
— Old, peaceful folk long since passed out of mind,
And little children — one whose hand held still
An earth-grown daffodil.

And here I saw one pausing for a space
To lift a wistful face
— Up to a certain window where there dreamed
— — A little brood left motherless; and there
— — One turned to where his unploughed fields lay bare;
— And others lingering passed — but one there seemed
So over-glad to haste, she scarce could wait
To reach the churchyard gate!

The farrier's little maid who loved too well
And died — I may not tell
— How glad she seemed. My neighbors, young and old,
— — With backward glances lingered as they went;
— — Only upon one face was all content,
— A sorrow comforted — a peace untold.
I watched them through the swinging gate — the dawn
Stayed till the last had gone.