Lanyth: Rain after Midnight

 The night comes down in steady, soundless sheets,  

A rain that neither hurries nor relents,  

And I, alone beneath the street-lamp's glow,  

Have walked these hours till the pavement gleams  

Like some forgotten river running black.  

No voice replies; no window shows a face.  

The houses stand with shutters closed and blind,  

Their chimneys cold, their hearths long turned to ash.  

I pass the watchman's lantern, small and low,  

And drop my eyes—he has no word for me,  

Nor I for him. We share the dark, that's all.  

The rain has walked with me these many years,  

Out in the wet and back into the wet,  

Past the last light where pavements end in mud,  

Where fields lie open under starless sky  

And trees stand sentinel in dripping rows.  

They do not speak; they only stand and wait,  

As I have waited, listening for a step  

That never comes, a name I dare not call.  

O heart, be quiet now, and let the rain  

Fall where it will, upon the empty street,  

Upon the roof that shelters no one now,  

Upon the leaves that rot where they have fallen.  

Into each life some solitude must come,  

Some nights must lengthen, cold and uncompanioned.  

Yet still the rain keeps falling, soft and sure,  

And I go on, acquainted with the dark.  

The clock high on the tower strikes the hour—  

Neither too early, neither come too late—  

And tells me nothing I have not known before.  

I have been one who walks the night alone,  

And so I walk, and so the rain walks too.