Old Graybeard

About the shaking window, Across the bleak brown hill, Old Graybeard wanders lonely Beneath the starshine chill. And ever, as he walks there, In a thin old voice he croons Snatches of songs forgotten And staves of ancient tunes. He cannot mind them rightly: He cannot sing one through: All his old memory clings to Are gusty notes and few, - A scrap of a roystering chorus, A catch from a lost refrain, Like ghosts of dear dead faces Half seen in dreams again. And best he loves to sing you When the fire burns red and low, Such airs as lads and lasses Might tread to, long ago, - And now he stirs old sorrow And now he wakens tears, With a lilt that the dead dance back to Across the waste of years. About the drowsy farmstead, Adown the empty moor, Old Graybeard wanders piping And lingers by the door. Across the fields where sadly All night a moor-bird cries, Old Graybeard's fitful music In snatches wakes and dies.