A Poem

Elinor Wylie



The Lost Path

THE garden's full of scented wallflowers,

And, save that these stir faintly, nothing stirs;

Only a distant bell in hollow chime

Cried out just now for far-forgoten time,

And three reverberate words the great bell spoke.

The knocker's made of brass, the door of oak,

And such a clamor must be loosed on air

By the knocker's blow that knock I do not dare.

The silence is a spell, and if it break,

What things, that now lie sleeping, will awake?


Are simple creatures lying there in cool

Sweet linen sheets, in slumber like the pool

Of moonlight white as water on the floor?

Will they come down laughing and unlock the door?

And will they draw me in, and let me sit

On the tall settle while the lamp is lit?

And shall I see their innocent clean lives

Shining as plainly as the plates and knives,

The blue bowls, and the brass cage with its bird?


But listen! listen! surely something stirred

Within the house, and creeping down the halls

Draws close to me with sinister footfalls.

Will long pale fingers softly lift the latch,

And lead me up, under the osier thatch,

To a little room, a little secret room,

Hung with green arras picturing the doom,

The most disasterous death of some proud knight?

And shall I search the room by candle-light

And see, behind the curtains of my bed,

A murdered man who sleeps as sleep the dead?


Or will my clamorous knocking shake the trees

With lonely thunder through the stillnesses,

And then lie down--the coldest fear of all--

To nothing, and deliberate silence fall

On the house deep in the silence, and no one come

To door or window, staring blind and dumb?