Old Letters

"The wind blew down the old thorn that you know;"
"She wore an apple-colored silk last night;"
"The baby grows each day a sweeter sight;"
"He has been dead a week; we miss him so;"—
These are the words that leap up in the air,
As rainy young sounds leap up in the spring,
At first of dusk, the sky a great soft thing;
Though it be April, yet we feel so bare.
Gusts, frocks, and a long grave wedged in between!—
Old houses, like to music at the fall,
Held these dim folk who drift here up and down:
She was a beauty, she in apple green.
I tell you that the happiest one of all
Was that dead man they missed so in the town.