Dirge / Helen Dudley

Dirge

A night of strange longing
Of dark unrest
Has fallen over the sands.

Like ghosts that are thronging,
Pale shapes from the waters  
Arise and I see their hands.

I hear a faint weeping;
Autumn is dead;
Withered the leaves on the ground.

A gray mist is creeping    
Out of the north
With the stealth of an Indian’s hound.

~~
Helen Dudley 
from Poetry, December 1917

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

Helen Dudley biography