SHE is standing at the gate,
 Tall and sweet,
And although the hour be late
 She will greet
 Me, her lover,
 Smiling over
Absent mind and tardy feet.

`Rest,? I?ll say to her, `and more rest,?
 As she wraps her love around me,
And I?ll tell her of the forest,
Of the strange, fear-haunted forest
 Where the fleshless beings found me.

For I trod a rock-strewn rude way
 Thinking only of my lover,
When the moonlight on the woodway,
Made a weird-way of the woodway,
 And a place where demons hover.

For the leaves that had been sleeping
 On the sodden soil-bed lying,
Look a motion and ?gan creeping,
Like a thousand small feet creeping,
 And there rose a distant sighing.

Why the trees did droop their tresses,
 Weeping leaves for something under,
And what bode in dim recesses,
Feline-lurked in dim recesses,
 Paled my cheeks and heart to ponder.

Had I feet I would have hurried,
 But the moonlit forest chained me,
Soul and body grasped and worried,
With frost-fingers gripped and worried,
 Till, half-stayed, my hurt heart pained me.?

`Rest,? I?ll say, `my Love, and more rest;
 Things unseen have life and motion
And they haunt the moonlit forest?
Soul-affronting haunt the forest,
 And men meet them on the ocean.?

She will look so grave and kind,
 Saying `Rest?
Rest is here for heart and mind
 On this breast?
 Put aside all
 Fancies idle,
I will shield you?Love is best.?