(All Souls’ Eve in Dublin)

She has come in to light

Tall candles that will shine to–night

Round scarlet flowers in a silver cup,

Round golden fruit and nuts red–brown

On a table set for ten to sup,

With sparkle of glasses up and down,

Pearl–handled knives and painted plates,

The glow through glass of mellow wine,

In porcelain shells there are crystal dates

And shadows of ferns on the damask fine.

She thinks how, far away,

Her kindred at the end of day

Will have three slender candles lit,

And set them at a window small,

And after that will quiet sit

And make no feast at all;

But all the time can pray

For each departed soul that they remember

At the coming of November.

At Rosary hour she knows how they will kneel,

She knows each usual place:

Hers from that home the only absent face,

But in thought she is with them there,

She sees the ageing father worn and pale,

She hears the oft–repeated joyous ‘Hail,’

And echoing to the Angel's words the prayer,

Alternate heavenly greeting and human cry

Of those who, born to die,

Would have the Lord's good Mother intercede

For them in the hour of need.

Tears fill her eyes, she thinks that she would kneel

To make her own appeal,

Not there among the rest,

But in the little curtained room apart,

Before the picture of the Sacred Heart.

So she might ease the sorrow in her breast,

There by the neatly painted mantel–shelf

Where she had placed, herself,

The Virgin gowned in white, with girdle blue,

And little golden roses on her feet,

Raised hands and countenance so sweet,

She thinks that she would stay

In there alone to pray,

Speaking the name of one among the dead

Not spoken in her father's or her mother's prayer,

Not ever mentioned there,

A stranger to them almost, who did not know

That he had loved her so.