The Haunted Room.

Its casements' diamond disks of glass      Stare myriad on a terrace old,     Where urns, unkempt with ragged grass,      Foam o'er with frothy cold.     The snow rounds o'er each stair of stone;      The frozen fount is hooped with pearl;     Down desolate walks, like phantoms lone,      Thin, powd'ry snow-wreaths whirl.     And to each rose-tree's stem that bends      With silver snow-combs, glued with frost,     It seems each summer rosebud sends      Its airy, scentless ghost.     The stiff Elizabethan pile      Chatters with cold thro' all its panes,     And rumbling down each chimney file      The mad wind shakes his reins.     *    *    *    *    *    *    *     Lone in the Northern angle, dim      With immemorial dust, it lay,     Where each gaunt casement's stony rim      Stared lidless to the day.     Drear in the Northern angle, hung      With olden arras dusky, where     Tall, shadowy Tristrams fought and sung      For shadowy Isolds fair.     Lies by a dingy cabinet      A tarnished lute upon the floor;     A talon-footed chair is set      Grotesquely by the door.     A carven, testered bedstead stands      With rusty silks draped all about;     And like a moon in murky lands      A mirror glitters out.     Dark in the Northern angle, where      In musty arras eats and clings     The drowsy moth; and frightened there      The wild wind sighs and sings     Adown the roomy flue and takes      And swings the ghostly mirror till     It shrieks and creaks, then pulls and shakes      The curtains with a will.     A starving mouse forever gnaws      Behind a polished panel dark,     And 'long the floor its shadow draws      A poplar in the park.     I have been there when blades of light      Stabbed each dull, stained, and dusty pane;     I have been there at dead of night,      But never will again....     She grew upon my vision as      Heat sucked from the dry summer sod;     In taffetas as green as grass      Silent and faint she trod;     And angry jewels winked and frowned      In serpent coils on neck and wrist,     And 'round her dainty waist was wound      A zone of silver mist.     And icy fair as some bleak land      Her pale, still face stormed o'er with night     Of raven tresses, and her hand      Was beautiful and white.     Before the ebon mirror old      Full tearfully she made her moan,     And then a cock crew far and cold;      I looked and she was gone.     As if had come a sullying breath      And from the limpid mirror passed,     Her presence past, like some near death      Leaving my blood aghast.     Tho' I've been there when blades of light      Stabbed each dull, stained, and dusty pane;     Tho' I've been there at dead of night,      I never will again.