THE NEIGHBORS: THEODOSIA GARRISON

_At first cock-crow_
_The ghosts must go_
_Back to their quiet graves below._

Against the distant striking of the clock
I heard the crowing cock,
And I arose and threw the window wide;
Long, long before the setting of the moon,
And yet I knew they must be passing soon--
My neighbors who had died--
Back to their narrow green-roofed homes that wait
Beyond the churchyard gate.

I leaned far out and waited--all the world
Was like a thing impearled,
Mysterious and beautiful and still:
The crooked road seemed one the moon might lay,
Our little village slept in Quaker gray,
And gray and tall the poplars on the hill;
And then far off I heard the cock--and then
My neighbors passed again.

At first it seemed a white cloud, nothing more,
Slow drifting by my door,
Or gardened lilies swaying in the wind;
Then suddenly each separate face I knew,
The tender lovers drifting two and two,