The Ghost-Road

The winds and the pines are whispering,
The river girds in its flight,
My footfalls sound through ancient tiles
Where grey rats flit from sight.

What monarch raised those palace walls?
Who knows to-day his name
Who left beneath yon precipice
The stone wrack of his fame?

Like jets of dusky blue I see
Ghosts from the gloom arise,
Down the forgotten road return
Strange rumours and faint sighs.
The thousand voices of the void
Blend to a chant bizarre,
And the purple leaves are carpeted
For Autumn's avatar.
The death-doomed legions thunder past
In the wake of fleeting years;
I fain would drown their tramp with song,
But all my songs are tears.