POETRY.
Of village roofs, on April days, The bloom of peach and cherry weaves A mist of white, a coral haze.
You hear along the narrow street The splash of churning water-mills, The clink of wooden-sandalled feet, The rush of overflowing rills.
Above the street the sunlight fades To dusk, where spectral silence broods In avenues and dim arcades And stairways of sepulchral woods.
And up the paths a pilgrim throng Moves silently in winding files, While tremors of a ghostly gong Go echoing down the forest aisles. By mystic lamp, and sacred fount, And demons grasping golden rods, A thousand granite steps they mount To shrines of their vermilion gods.