Eidolons

The white moth-mullein brushed its slim Cool, faery flowers against his knee; In places where the way lay dim The branches, arching suddenly, Made tomblike mystery for him. The wild-rose and the elder, drenched With rain, made pale a misty place,- From which, as from a ghost, he blenched; He walking with averted face, And lips in desolation clenched. For far within the forest,-where Weird shadows stood like phantom men, And where the ground-hog dug its lair, The she-fox whelped and had her den,- The thing kept calling, buried there. One dead trunk, like a ruined tower, Dark-green with toppling trailers, shoved Its wild wreck o'er the bush; one bower Looked like a dead man, capped and gloved, The one who haunted him each hour. Now at his side he heard it: thin As echoes of a thought that speaks To conscience. Listening with his chin Upon his palm, against his cheeks He felt the moon's white finger win. And now the voice was still: and lo, With eyes that stared on naught but night, He saw?-what none on earth shall know!- Was it the face that far from sight Had lain here, buried long ago? But men who found him,-thither led By the wild fox,-within that place Read in his stony eyes, 'tis said, The thing he saw there, face to face, The thing that left him staring dead.