The garden's full of scented wallflowers, <br />And, save that these stir faintly, nothing stirs; <br />Only a distant bell in hollow chime <br />Cried out just now for far-forgoten time, <br />And three reverberate words the great bell spoke. <br />The knocker's made of brass, the door of oak, <br />And such a clamor must be loosed on air <br />By the knocker's blow that knock I do not dare. <br />The silence is a spell, and if it break, <br />What things, that now lie sleeping, will awake? <br /> <br />Are simple creatures lying there in cool <br />Sweet linen sheets, in slumber like the pool <br />Of moonlight white as water on the floor? <br />Will they come down laughing and unlock the door? <br />And will they draw me in, and let me sit <br />On the tall settle while the lamp is lit? <br />And shall I see their innocent clean lives <br />Shining as plainly as the plates and knives, <br />The blue bowls, and the brass cage with its bird? <br /> <br />But listen! listen! surely something stirred <br />Within the house, and creeping down the halls <br />Draws close to me with sinister footfalls. <br />Will long pale fingers softly lift the latch, <br />And lead me up, under the osier thatch, <br />To a little room, a little secret room, <br />Hung with green arras picturing the doom, <br />The most disasterous death of some proud knight? <br />And shall I search the room by candle-light <br />And see, behind the curtains of my bed, <br />A murdered man who sleeps as sleep the dead? <br /> <br />Or will my clamorous knocking shake the trees <br />With lonely thunder through the stillnesses, <br />And then lie down--the coldest fear of all-- <br />To nothing, and deliberate silence fall <br />On the house deep in the silence, and no one come <br />To door or window, staring blind and dumb?<br /><br />Elinor Morton Wylie<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-lost-path/
