The Wind of Memory

RED curtains shut the storm from sight, The inner rooms are live with light; The fireside faces all aglow See not the pale ghost in the snow, The pale ghost at the window pressed, With the wind moaning in her breast. She sees the face she hurt with scorn, The other face where joy, new born, Died out at her cheap mockery; The eyes she filled, how bitterly! The head that drooped beneath her jest— The wind is moaning in her breast. Invisible, unfelt, unknown, She lingers trembling. She alone Notes tenderly her vacant place, And sees in it her vanished face; She only—of this happy nest! The wind is moaning in her breast. Star-like the happy windows glow, Framed in with mile on mile of snow; And from their light a thing of death, Of grief and memory vanisheth, Her sin not deep but unredressed, And the wind moaning in her breast.