SHADOW TO SHADOW.

Otago Witness, Issue 3870, 15 May 1928, Page 74

SHADOW TO SHADOW.

If it would walk at all. This was the very night. I leaned out the window while the moon - Threw- down the tunnelled walk a shadowpall Of black magnolia shade ; I heard the tune A wind sang by the ivy-mantled wall. The west was dark, but for a wisp of light. And yet no night-birds had begun to call— If it would walk at all, this was the night. The quiet street lay dim beyond the gate. And quietly its bars Slid past each other like a gliding grate Of ribs across the stars. Yet, not a soiftid, no reassuring click Of metal latch, and not a bird would scold Only the swirling darkness growing thick. And I—more cold. The whirling darkness folded in to drape And shroud the shape of nothing, till it stood With bone-white moonbeams glimmering in its cape And shadows for a hood. Right well I knew that if it spoke mv name How they would find me by the window there; I guessed the grisly angle of the jaw, The teeth below no nostrils, and the stare. But not a whisper froze the waiting shadows ■ No voice was added to the choir of care Until I croaked into a world of silence, “ How are they over there? ” Then like the last priest of a vanished nation, The shadow drew the cowl about its head, And with a web-like hand made salutation And went back to the dead. Hervey Allen, in the North American Review.