The fields are haunted! Where there stood
A green-gowned, gold-haired sisterhood,
Their pale ghosts flit across the grass
When I, at twilight, trembling pass.
I hear their filmy garments trail,
And see their faces glimmer pale.
They were so generous, so bold
To fling away their lavish gold
Where it availed or gladdened none,
That now their little race is run.
Poor swaggering gallants of a day!
A set of merry spendthrifts they.
Yet something of lost beauty clings
Around the frail transparent things;
As though dead belles of bygone balls
Should flutter back to ruined halls
And dance a spectral measure there
Before they vanished into air!
So now the fields by night and day,
Are full of tiny ghosts in gray,
Who search the June-world through in vain,
To find their vanished gold again;
Who haunt dim crannies in the hill,
And shiver though the wind is still!
