Poem of the Week: "The Panic" by Archibald Young Campbell

Archibald Young Campbell (1885-1958) was a Cambridge don (Classics) and authority on Horace.

The Panic

Pale in her evening silks she sat,
That but a week had been my bride;
Then, while the stars we wondered at,
Without a word she left my side;
Devious and silent as a bat,
I watched her round the garden glide.

Soon o'er the moonlit lawn she streamed,
Then floated idly down the glade;
Now like a forest nymph she seemed,
Now like a light within a shade;
She turned, and for a moment gleamed,
And suddenly I saw her fade.

I had been held in tranced stare
Till she had vanished from my sight;
Then did I start in wild despair,
And followed fast in mad affright;
What if herself a spirit were,
And had so soon rejoined the night?