Like one who fears defeat.

And sitting here beyond the storm,
Alone within the lonely house,
It seems of Sleep the Fairy charm
Weaves incantations; even the mouse
That scratched has come to harm.

And in this grave light, stolen o'er
Familiar objects, grown severe,
I 'm strange--as, opening a door,
One finds one's dead self standing near,
One knew not dead before.

The old stair rings with growling gusts;
Each hearth's flue gasps a gorgon throat
That snores and sleeps; the spectral dusts,
Which yonder Shawnee war-gear coat,
Whose quiver hangs and rusts,

Are shaken; till I feel that he,
Who wore it in the wild war-dance,
And died in it, fills shadowy
Its wampumed skins; its plume, perchance,
Shakes, scowling eyes at me.

And so the Swedenborge I toss
Aside, contented with the dark
That takes me. O'er the fire-light cross;
Pass where the andirons spit and spark,
And ponder o'er her loss.

Or from the flaw-splashed window yearn
Out toward the waste, where sway and dip
Dank, dark December boughs, where burn
Some late last leaves, that icy drip
No matter where you turn.

Where sodden soil, you scarce have trod,
Fills oozy footprints; and the night
So ugly that it mocks at God,
Creating monsters which the sight
Fancies, unseen, abroad.

The months I count: how long it seems
Since that bland summer when with her,
There on her porch, in rainy gleams
We watched the mellow lightning stir
In rain-clouds gray as dreams!

When all the west a torn gold sheet--
Swift openings of some Titan's forge--
Laid bald with storm; in quivering heat
Pitched precipice and nightmare gorge,
Where thunder torrents beat.

And strong the wind was as again
Storm lit the instant earth; and how
The wood sprang out one virent stain;
We read no more--lost is it now!--
In _Romance of a Reign_;

A tale of nowhere; then that we
Were reading till we heard the plunge
Of distant thunder sullenly,
And left to mark long lightnings lunge
Convulsions fiery.

What worlds love wrought us, dreaming there,
Of sorcery and necromance!
With spirits lustrous of the air,
A land like one great pearl, a trance
Of floods and forests fair.

Where w