Children of the Night

The Pity of the Leaves

     Vengeful across the cold November moors,
     Loud with ancestral shame there came the bleak
     Sad wind that shrieked, and answered with a shriek,
     Reverberant through lonely corridors.
     The old man heard it; and he heard, perforce,
     Words out of lips that were no more to speak —
     Words of the past that shook the old man's cheek
     Like dead, remembered footsteps on old floors.

     And then there were the leaves that plagued him so!
     The brown, thin leaves that on the stones outside
     Skipped with a freezing whisper.  Now and then
     They stopped, and stayed there — just to let him know
     How dead they were; but if the old man cried,
     They fluttered off like withered souls of men.