Can Such Things Be?

A poem by Madison Julius Cawein

Meseemed that while she played, while lightly yet
Her fingers fell, as roses bloom by bloom,
I listened dead within a mighty room
Of some old palace where great casements let
Gaunt moonlight in, that glimpsed a parapet
Of statued marble: in the arrased gloom
Majestic pictures towered, dim as doom,
The dreams of Titian and of Tintoret.
And then, it seemed, along a corridor,
A mile of oak, a stricken footstep came,
Hurrying, yet slow … I thought long centuries
Passed ere she entered she, I loved of yore,
For whom I died, who wildly wailed my name
And bent and kissed me on the mouth and eyes.