Too far away, oh love, I know, 
To save me from this haunted road, 
Whose lofty roses break and blow 
On a night-sky bent with a load 
 
Of lights: each solitary rose,
Each arc-lamp golden does expose 
Ghost beyond ghost of a blossom, shows 
Night blenched with a thousand snows. 
 
Of hawthorn and of lilac trees, 
White lilac; shows discoloured night
Dripping with all the golden lees 
Laburnum gives back to light. 
 
And shows the red of hawthorn set 
On high to the purple heaven of night, 
Like flags in blenched blood newly wet,
Blood shed in the noiseless fight. 
 
Of life for love and love for life, 
Of hunger for a little food, 
Of kissing, lost for want of a wife 
Long ago, long ago wooed.

 . . . . . .

Too far away you are, my love, 
To steady my brain in this phantom show 
That passes the nightly road above 
And returns again below. 
 
The enormous cliff of horse-chestnut trees
 Has poised on each of its ledges 
An erect small girl looking down at me; 
White-night-gowned little chits I see, 
 And they peep at me over the edges 
Of the leaves as though they would leap, should I call
 Them down to my arms; 
?But, child, you?re too small for me, too small 
 Your little charms.? 
 
White little sheaves of night-gowned maids, 
 Some other will thresh you out!
And I see leaning from the shades 
A lilac like a lady there, who braids 
 Her white mantilla about 
Her face, and forward leans to catch the sight
 Of a man?s face,
Gracefully sighing through the white 
 Flowery mantilla of lace. 
 
And another lilac in purple veiled 
 Discreetly, all recklessly calls 
In a low, shocking perfume, to know who has hailed
Her forth from the night: my strength has failed 
 In her voice, my weak heart falls: 
Oh, and see the laburnum shimmering 
 Her draperies down, 
As if she would slip the gold, and glimmering
 White, stand naked of gown.

 . . . . . . 

The pageant of flowery trees above 
 The street pale-passionate goes, 
And back again down the pavement, Love
 In a lesser pageant flows.
 
Two and two are the folk that walk, 
 They pass in a half embrace 
Of linkèd bodies, and they talk 
 With dark face leaning to face. 
 
Come then, my love, come as you will
 Along this haunted road, 
Be whom you will, my darling, I shall 
 Keep with you the troth I trowed.