THE PHANTOM VOICE.
Reading edition
———
BY SARAH HELEN WHITMAN.
———
“A low bewildering melody is murmuring in my ear.”
“It is a phantom voice:
Again!—again! how solemnly it falls
Into my heart of hearts!” Scenes from “Polition.”
Through the solemn hush of midnight,
How sadly on my ear
Falls the echo of a harp whose tones
I never more may hear!
A wild, unearthly melody,
Whose monotone doth move,
The saddest, sweetest cadences
Of sorrow and of love.
Till the burden of remembrance weighs
Like lead upon my heart,
And the shadow on my soul that sleeps
Will never more depart.
The ghastly moonlight gliding,
Like a phantom through the gloom,
How it fills with solemn fantasies
My solitary room!
And the sighing winds of Autumn,
Ah! how sadly they repeat
That low, bewildering melody,
So mystically sweet!
I hear it softly murmuring
At midnight on the hill,
Or across the wide savannas,
When all beside is still.
I hear it in the moaning
Of the melancholy main—
In the rushing of the night-wind—
The “rhythm of the rain.”
E’en the wild-flowers of the forest,
Waving sadly to and fro,
But whisper to my boding heart,
The burden of its wo.
And the spectral moon, (now paling
And fading) seems to say—
“I leave thee to remembrances
That will not pass away.”
Ah, through all the solemn midnight,
How mournful ’tis to hark
To the voices of the silence—
The whisper of the dark!
In vain I turn some solace
From the constant stars to crave:—
They are shining on thy sepulchre,
Are smiling on thy grave.
How I weary of their splendor!
All night long they seem to say,
“We are lonely—sad and lonely—
Far away—far, far away!”
Thus through all the solemn midnight,
That phantom voice I hear,
As it echoes through the silence
When no earthly sound is near.
And though dawn-light yields to noon-light,
And though darkness turns to day,
They but leave me to remembrances,
That will not pass away.