Halloween.

It was down in the woodland on last Hallowe'en,     Where silence and darkness had built them a lair,     That I felt the dim presence of her, the unseen,     And heard her still step on the ghost-haunted air.     It was last Hallowe'en in the glimmer and swoon     Of mist and of moonlight that thickened and thinned,     That I saw the gray gleam of her eyes in the moon,     And hair, like a raven, blown wild in the wind.     It was last Hallowe'en where starlight and dew     Made mystical marriage on flower and leaf,     That she led me with looks of a love that I knew,     And lured with the voice of a heart-buried grief.     It was last Hallowe'en in the forest of dreams,     Where trees are eidolons and shadows have eyes,     That I saw her pale face like the foam of far streams,     And heard, like the leaf-lisp, her tears and her sighs.     It was last Hallowe'en, the haunted, the dread,     In the wind-tattered wood by the storm-twisted pine,     That I, who am living, kept tryst with the dead,     And clasped her a moment and dreamed she was mine.