MIDNIGHT has come, and the great Christ Church Bell

                   And may a lesser bell sound through the room;

                   And it is All Souls' Night,

                   And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel

                   Bubble upon the table.  A ghost may come;

                   For it is a ghost's right,

                   His element is so fine

                   Being sharpened by his death,

                   To drink from the wine-breath

                   While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.

                   I need some mind that, if the cannon sound

                   From every quarter of the world, can stay

                   Wound in mind's pondering

                   As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound;

                   Because I have a marvellous thing to say,

                   A certain marvellous thing

                   None but the living mock,

                   Though not for sober ear;

                   It may be all that hear

                   Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.

                   Horton's the first I call.  He loved strange thought

                   And knew that sweet extremity of pride

                   That's called platonic love,

                   And that to such a pitch of passion wrought

                   Nothing could bring him, when his lady died,

                   Anodyne for his love.

                   Words were but wasted breath;

                   One dear hope had he:

                   The inclemency

                   Of that or the next winter would be death.

                   Two thoughts were so mixed up I could not tell

                   Whether of her or God he thought the most,

                   But think that his mind's eye,

                   When upward turned, on one sole image fell;

                   And that a slight companionable ghost,

                   Wild with divinity,

                   Had so lit up the whole

                   Immense miraculous house

                   The Bible promised us,

                   It seemed a gold-fish swimming in a bowl.

                   On Florence Emery I call the next,

                   Who finding the first wrinkles on a face

                   Admired and beautiful,

                   And knowing that the future would be vexed

                   With 'minished beauty, multiplied commonplace,

                   preferred to teach a school

                   Away from neighbour or friend,

                   Among dark skins, and there

                   permit foul years to wear

                   Hidden from eyesight to the unnoticed end.

                   Before that end much had she ravelled out

                   From a discourse in figurative speech

                   By some learned Indian

                   On the soul's journey.  How it is whirled about,

                   Wherever the orbit of the moon can reach,

                   Until it plunge into the sun;

                   And there, free and yet fast,

                   Being both Chance and Choice,

                   Forget its broken toys

                   And sink into its own delight at last.

                   And I call up MacGregor from the grave,

                   For in my first hard springtime we were friends.

                   Although of late estranged.

                   I thought him half a lunatic, half knave,

                   And told him so, but friendship never ends;

                   And what if mind seem changed,

                   And it seem changed with the mind,

                   When thoughts rise up unbid

                   On generous things that he did

                   And I grow half contented to be blind!

                   He had much industry at setting out,

                   Much boisterous courage, before loneliness

                   Had driven him crazed;

                   For meditations upon unknown thought

                   Make human intercourse grow less and less;

                   They are neither paid nor praised.

                   but he d object to the host,

                   The glass because my glass;

                   A ghost-lover he was

                   And may have grown more arrogant being a ghost.

                   But names are nothing.  What matter who it be,

                   So that his elements have grown so fine

                   The fume of muscatel

                   Can give his sharpened palate ecstasy

                   No living man can drink from the whole wine.

                   I have mummy truths to tell

                   Whereat the living mock,

                   Though not for sober ear,

                   For maybe all that hear

                   Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.

                   Such thought such thought have I that hold it tight

                   Till meditation master all its parts,

                   Nothing can stay my glance

                   Until that glance run in the world's despite

                   To where the damned have howled away their hearts,

                   And where the blessed dance;

                   Such thought, that in it bound

                   I need no other thing,

                   Wound in mind's wandering

                   As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound.