All Souls’ Night

Midnight has come and the great Christ Church Bell,And may a lesser bell, sound through the room;And it is All Souls’ Night,And two long glasses brimmed with muscatelBubble upon the table. A ghost may come;For it is a ghost’s right,His element is so fineBeing sharpened by his death,To drink from the wine-breathWhile our gross palates drink from the whole wine.

I need some mind that, if the cannon soundFrom every quarter of the world, can stayWound in mind’s pondering,As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound;Because I have a marvellous thing to say,A certain marvellous thingNone but the living mock,Though not for sober ear;It may be all that hearShould laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.

H----’s the first I call. He loved strange thoughtAnd knew that sweet extremity of prideThat’s called platonic love,And that to such a pitch of passion wroughtNothing could bring him, when his lady died,Anodyne for his love.Words were but wasted breath;One dear hope had he:The inclemencyOf that or the next winter would be death.

Two thoughts were so mixed up I could not tellWhether of her or God he thought the most,But think that his mind’s eye,When upward turned, on one sole image fell;And that a slight companionable ghost,Wild with divinity,Had so lit up the wholeImmense miraculous houseThe Bible promised us,It seemed a gold-fish swimming in a bowl.

On Florence Emery I call the next,Who finding the first wrinkles on a faceAdmired and beautiful,And knowing that the future would be vexedWith ’minished beauty, multiplied commonplace,Preferred to teach a school,Away from neighbour or friendAmong dark skins, and therePermit foul years to wearHidden from eyesight to the unnoticed end.

Before that end much had she ravelled outFrom a discourse in figurative speechBy some learned IndianOn the soul’s journey. How it is whirled about,Wherever the orbit of the moon can reach,Until it plunge into the sun;And there, free and yet fastBeing both Chance and Choice,Forget its broken toysAnd sink into its own delight at last.

And I call up MacGregor from the grave,For in my first hard springtime we were friends,Although of late estranged.I thought him half a lunatic, half knave,And told him so, but friendship never ends;And what if mind seem changed,And it seem changed with the mind,When thoughts rise up unbidOn generous things that he didAnd I grow half contented to be blind.

He had much industry at setting out,Much boisterous courage, before lonelinessHad driven him crazed;For meditations upon unknown thoughtMake human intercourse grow less and less;They are neither paid nor praised.But he’d object to the host,The glass because my glass;A ghost-lover he wasAnd may have grown more arrogant being a ghost.

But names are nothing. What matter who it be,So that his elements have grown so fineThe fume of muscatelCan give his sharpened palate ecstasyNo living man can drink from the whole wine.I have mummy truths to tellWhereat the living mock,Though not for sober ear,For maybe all that hearShould laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.

Such thought--such thought have I that hold it tightTill meditation master all its parts,Nothing can stay my glanceUntil that glance run in the world’s despiteTo where the damned have howled away their hearts,And where the blessed dance;Such thought, that in it boundI need no other thingWound in mind’s wandering,As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound.