Autumn Evening

The cold light dies, the candles glow,
The wind whirls down the bare allée
Outside my gleaming window-panes
The phantom populations go,
Blown, amid leaves, above, below.

Yet these are solid German folk
Outside, beneath the thinning planes
And the reflections that awoke
At candle time upon my panes
Are misty, unsubstantial gleams.

Only outside, obscurity,
The waning light, the cold blue beams
And rafts of shadow trick the eye;
So that the frozen passers-by
Look ghosts—and only real seems
My candle lighted, lonely place,
The gleaming windows and your face
Looking in likeness from the wall
Where the fantastic shadows fall….

Now the ghosts pass, the cold wind cries,
The leaves sift downwards, the world dies,
But in the shadows, lo! your eyes.