Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

SUDDENLY, out of dark and leafy ways,

We came upon the little house asleep

In cold blind stillness, shadowless and deep,

In the white magic of the full moon-blaze:

Strangers without the gate, we stood agaze,

Fearful to break that quiet, and to creep

Into the home that had been ours to keep

Through a long year of happy nights and days.

So unfamiliar in the white moon-gleam,

So old and ghostly like a house of dream,

It stood, that over us there stole the dread

That even as we watched it, side by side,

The ghosts of lovers, who had lived and died

Within its walls, were sleeping in our bed.