The white moth-mullein brushed its slim
Cool, fairy flowers against his knee;
In places where the way lay dim
The branches, arching hollowly,
Made tomb-like mystery for him.
The wild-rose and the elder, drenched
With rain, made pale a misty place,—
From which, as from a ghost, he blenched;
He walking with averted face,
And lips white-closed and teeth tight-clenched.
For far within the forest,—where
Weird shadows stood like phantom men,
And where the ground-hog dug its lair,
The she-fox whelped and had her den,—
The thing kept calling, buried there.
One dead trunk, like a ruined tower,
Dark green with toppling trailers, shoved
Its wild wreck o’er the brush; one bower
Looked like a dead man, capped and gloved,
The thing that haunted him each hour.
Now at his side he heard it: thin
As echoes of a thought that speaks
In sleep: and, listening with his chin
Upon his palm, unto his cheeks
He felt the moon’s slow silver win.
And now the voice was still: and lo,
With eyes that stared on naught but night,
He looked and saw—what none shall know!
The form of one, who long from sight
Had lain, here murdered long ago?...
And men who found him,—thither led
By the she-fox,—within that place
Saw in his stony eyes, ’tis said,
The thing he met there face to face,
The thing that left him staring dead.