... "_From good to good, And good to better you say we go._" (There's an owl overhead.) "_You say that's so?_" My American friend of the rue de la Paix? "_Grow better and better from day to day._" Well, well I had a friend that's not a friend to-day; Well, well, I had a love who's resting in the clay Of a suburban cemetery. One has felt all through that something weird is impending; but I am sure that no ghost-scene so curiously impressive as that which follows has ever been written before. It could not have been done, waiting as it was for the conjuncture of time and temperament and circumstance. But here it is, a thing essentially of our day; with its ironic mood, its new lore, its air of detachment, its glint of grim humour now and then, and its intense passion, both of love and of despair, which the fugitive show of nonchalance does but serve to accentuate. Passion is the dominant note as the myriad wraiths of long-dead lovers crowd past the brooding figure in the darkness. And so beside the woodland in the sheen And shimmer of the dewlight, crescent moon And dew wet leaves I heard the cry "Your lips! Your lips! Your lips." It shook me where I sat, It shook me like a trembling, fearful reed, The call of the dead. A multitudinous And shadowy host glimmered and gleamed, Face to face, eye to eye, heads thrown back, and lips Drinking, drinking from lips, drinking from bosoms The coldness of the dew--and all a gleam Translucent, moonstruck as of moving glasses, Gleams on dead hair, gleams on the white dead shoulders Upon the backgrounds of black purple woods....