Ella Wheeler Wilcox (Элла Уилкокс)
A Rainy Night
When the fingers of rain on the window pane Tap, tap, tap, And the feet of the rain run over the roof In the dark of a summer night, Then out of their graves old memories creep And they steal up into the house of sleep And they rap, rap, rap On the door of the heart till it sets a light And opens the portal and spreads the board For the waiting horde. Then the great wide world seems all astir With the ghostly shapes of the things that were. A Pleasure that perished, a dead Despair, An old Delight and a vanished Care, A Passion that builded its funeral pyre, From the worthless timber of brief desire, A Hope that wandered and lost its way In the dazzling beams of its own bright ray, With long gone Worries and long lost Joys Come stealthily creeping with never a noise (For the things that have gone on the road to God, When they turn back earthward are silence-shod); And they enter the heart's great living room When the rain beats down from a sky of gloom In the dark of a summer night. And they tell old tales and they sing old songs That are sweet, sweet, sweet; While the fingers of rain on the window pane Beat, beat, beat. And they feast on the past and drink its wine And call it a brew divine. But when in the east the darkness pales And the edge of the clouds show light, The ghosts go back with a silent tread And only the heart knows what they said In the dark of the summer night.
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