When the tree bares, the music of it changes: Hard and keen is the sound, long and mournful; Pale are the poplar boughs in the evening light Above my house, against a slate-cold cloud. When the house ages and the tenants leave it, Cricket sings in the tall grass by the threshold; Spider, by the cold mantel, hangs his web. Here, in a hundred years from that clear season When first I came here, bearing lights and music, To this old ghostly house my ghost will come,-- Pause in the half-light, turn by the poplar, glide Above tall grasses through the broken door. Who will say that he saw--or the dusk deceived him-- A mist with hands of mist blow down from the tree And open the door and enter and close it after? Who will say that he saw, as midnight struck Its tremulous golden twelve, a light in the window, And first heard music, as of an old piano, Music remote, as if it came from the earth, Far down; and then, in the quiet, eager voices? "... Houses grow old and die, houses have ghosts-- Once in a hundred years we return, old house, And live once more." ... And then the ancient answer, In a voice not human, but more like creak of boards Or rattle of panes in the wind--"Not as the owner, But as a guest you come, to fires not lit By hands of yours.... Through these long-silent chambers Move slowly, turn, return, and bring once more Your lights and music. It will be good to talk." IV "This is the hour," she said, "of transmutation: It is the eucharist of the evening, changing All things to beauty. Now the ancient river, That all day under the arch was polished jade, Becomes the ghost of a river, thinly gleaming Under a silver cloud.... It is not water: It is that azure stream in which the stars Bathe at the daybreak, and become immortal...." "And the moon," said I--not thus to be outdone-- "What of the moon? Over the dusty plane-trees Which crouch in the dusk above their feeble lanterns, Each coldly lighted by his tiny faith; The moon, the waxen moon, now almost full, Creeps whitely up.... Westward the waves of cloud, Vermilion, crimson, violet, stream on the air, Shatter to golden flakes in the icy green Translucency of twilight.... And the moon Drinks up their light, and as they fade or darken, Brightens.... O monstrous miracle of the twilight, That one should live because the others die!" "Strange too," she answered, "that upon this azure Pale-gleaming ghostly stream, impalpable-- So faint, so fine that scarcely it bears up The petals that the lantern strews upon it,-- These great black barges float like apparitions, Loom in the silver of it, beat upon it, Moving upon it as dragons move on air." "Thus always," then I answered,--looking never Toward her face, so beautiful and strange It grew, with feeding on the evening light,-- "The gross is given, by inscrutable God, Power to beat wide wings upon the subtle.