Poems (Argent)/The Closed Gate

by Alice Emily Argent

For works with similar titles, see The Closed Gate.

THE CLOSED GATE.

 

CONTRIBUTED TO "GREAT THOUGHTS."

BROAD the terrace is and stately,
 Arched with trees on either side,
Beauteous elms that wave sedately
 In their summer leaves of pride:
But the entrance gate is closed
As if death in life reposed.

I can see a garden lying
 In the distance dim and fair,
I can hear the breezes sighing
 Melancholy music there.

Old worn griffins, stony-hearted,
 With a grin sit on the gate,
Evil forms of the departed—
 Cold and grim and desolate.

And they guard, as if for ever
 Those unlifted hinges old,
Staring sentinels that never
 Will their mystery unfold.

There are statues in the shadows,
 In gray grandeur standing lone,
Gazing mutely o'er green meadows
 Where bright buttercups are blown.

And through peering long and surely,
 Marble fountains I can see,
Where white crystal waters purely
 Move in mystic melody.

Who lives there beyond the gables
 Of that house so calm and still?
Folks do speak in old wives' fables
 Of that house below the hill.

And they say a poor mad lady
 Paces idly on the walk,
In and out the grottoes shady
 With a strange fantastic talk.

And her hair is downward streaming,
 Unconfined by net or pin,
Floating with the wondrous gleaming
 Of the gold that lies within.

And her eyes have all the sorrow
 Of a poor dumb creature's pain,
For to her no kind to-morrow
 Brings her reason back again.

I have lingered in the gloaming
 But I never heard a sound,
Save those poor tired feet a-roaming
 Lonely o'er the garden ground.

All unearthly seems the stillness
 Brooding over every thing,
Like a place where heavy sickness
 Hangs a dark and sable wing!

Fascination leads me thither,
 For a spell about is cast
Round me as I wander hither
 Haunted by a shadowy past.

But I light not on the lady
 Stricken sorely unto death,
In that garden still and shady,
 Standing with suspended breath.

"Never see her? 'Tis a story,
 And a myth," I hear you say.
Not so, friends; that house so hoary
 Holds the truth of what I say:
Where the entrance gate is closed
As if Death in Life reposed!