Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE NEIGHBORS, by THEODOSIA (PICKERING) GARRISON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE NEIGHBORS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Against the distant striking of the clock
Last Line: Stayed till the last had gone.
Alternate Author Name(s): Faulks, Frederick J., Mrs.
Subject(s): Immortality; Neighbors


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,
Old, peaceful folk long since passed out of mind,
And little children -- one whose hand held still
An earth-grown daffodil.

And here I saw one pausing for a space
To lift a wistful face
Up to a certain window where there dreamed
A little brood left motherless; and there
One turned to where his unploughed fields lay bare;
And others lingering passed -- but one there seemed
So over-glad to haste, she scarce could wait
To reach the churchyard gate!

The farrier's little maid who loved too well
And died -- I may not tell
How glad she seemed. My neighbors, young and old,
With backward glances lingered as they went;
Only upon one face was all content,
A sorrow comforted -- a peace untold.
I watched them through the swinging gate -- the dawn
Stayed till the last had gone.





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