It was down in the woodland on last Hallowe’en,
Where silence and darkness had built them a lair,
That I felt the dim presence of her, the unseen,
And heard her still step on the hush-haunted air.
It was last Hallowe’en in the glimmer and swoon
Of mist and of moonlight, where once we had sinned,
That I saw the gray gleam of her eyes in the moon,
And hair, like a raven, blown wild on the wind.
It was last Hallowe’en where starlight and dew
Made mystical marriage on flower and leaf,
That she led me with looks of a love, that I knew
Was dead, and the voice of a passion too brief.
It was last Hallowe’en in the forest of dreams,
Where trees are eidolons and flowers have eyes,
That I saw her pale face like the foam of far streams,
And heard, like the night-wind, her tears and her sighs.
It was last Hallowe’en, the haunted, the dread,
In the wind-tattered wood, by the storm-twisted pine,
That I, who am living, kept tryst with the dead,
And clasped her a moment who once had been mine.
From The Poems of Madison Cawein: Volume V: Poems of Meditation and of Forest and Field (Small, Maynard & Company, 1907) by Madison Julius Cawein. This poem is in the public domain.
Madison Julius Cawein, otherwise known as the “Keats of Kentucky,” due to the influence of the English Romantics on his work, was born on March 23, 1865, in Louisville. His mother, Christina, was a spiritualist and author. His father, Dr. William Cawein, was also herbalist who inspired his poet son with a love of nature that later infused Madison’s poetry. Cawein also had four brothers and a sister.
