Hermione and other poems [electronic text]

SUMMER NIGHT

FROM the warm garden in the summer night All faintest odors came: the tuberose white Glimmered in its dark bed, and many a bloom Invisibly breathed spices on the gloom. It stirred a trouble in the man's dull heart, A vexing, mute unrest: "Now what thou art, Tell me!" he said in anger. Something sighed, "I am the poor ghost of a ghost that died In years gone by." And he recalled of old A passion dead—long dead, even then—that came And haunted many a night like this, the same

In their dim hush above the fragrant mould And glimmering flowers, and troubled all his breast. "Rest!" then he cried; "perturbëd spirit, rest!"