“I hear the piano playing —

         Just as a ghost might play.”

      “ – O, but what are you saying?

         There’s no piano to-day;

      Their old one was sold and broken;

         Years past it went amiss.”

      “ – I heard it, or shouldn’t have spoken:

            A strange house, this!

      “I catch some undertone here,

         From some one out of sight.”

      “ – Impossible; we are alone here,

         And shall be through the night.”

      “ – The parlour-door – what stirred it?”

         “ – No one: no soul’s in range.”

      “ – But, anyhow, I heard it,

            And it seems strange!

      “Seek my own room I cannot —

         A figure is on the stair!”

      “ – What figure?  Nay, I scan not

         Any one lingering there.

      A bough outside is waving,

         And that’s its shade by the moon.”

      “ – Well, all is strange!  I am craving

            Strength to leave soon.”

      “ – Ah, maybe you’ve some vision

         Of showings beyond our sphere;

      Some sight, sense, intuition

         Of what once happened here?

      The house is old; they’ve hinted

         It once held two love-thralls,

      And they may have imprinted

            Their dreams on its walls?

      “They were – I think ’twas told me —

         Queer in their works and ways;

      The teller would often hold me

         With weird tales of those days.

      Some folk can not abide here,

         But we – we do not care

      Who loved, laughed, wept, or died here,

            Knew joy, or despair.”

      As ’twere to-night, in the brief space

         Of a far eventime,

         My spirit rang achime

      At vision of a girl of grace;

      As ’twere to-night, in the brief space

         Of a far eventime.

      As ’twere at noontide of to-morrow

         I airily walked and talked,

         And wondered as I walked

      What it could mean, this soar from sorrow;

      As ’twere at noontide of to-morrow

         I airily walked and talked.

      As ’twere at waning of this week

         Broke a new life on me;

         Trancings of bliss to be

      In some dim dear land soon to seek;

      As ’twere at waning of this week

         Broke a new life on me!

         A forward rush by the lamp in the gloom,

            And we clasped, and almost kissed;

         But she was not the woman whom

         I had promised to meet in the thawing brume

      On that harbour-bridge; nor was I he of her tryst.

         So loosening from me swift she said:

            “O why, why feign to be

         The one I had meant! – to whom I have sped

         To fly with, being so sorrily wed!”

      – ’Twas thus and thus that she upbraided me.

         My assignation had struck upon

            Some others’ like it, I found.

         And her lover rose on the night anon;

         And then her husband entered on

      The lamplit, snowflaked, sloppiness around.

         “Take her and welcome, man!” he cried:

            “I wash my hands of her.

         I’ll find me twice as good a bride!”

         – All this to me, whom he had eyed,

      Plainly, as his wife’s planned deliverer.

         And next the lover: “Little I knew,

            Madam, you had a third!

         Kissing here in my very view!”

         – Husband and lover then withdrew.

      I let them; and I told them not they erred.

         Why not?  Well, there faced she and I —

            Two strangers who’d kissed, or near,

         Chancewise.  To see stand weeping by

         A woman once embraced, will try

      The tension of a man the most austere.

         So it began; and I was young,

            She pretty, by the lamp,

         As flakes came waltzing down among

         The waves of her clinging hair, that hung

      Heavily on her temples, dark and damp.

         And there alone still stood we two;

            She one cast off for me,

         Or so it seemed: while night ondrew,