Less Than a Ghost

I AM less than a ghost, less than a ghost walking
Along the bare aisle of the avenue:
Winter has frozen the ground, but a phantom leafage
Springs from the chestnut boughs, and hides from view
The wan, indifferent sky,
And memory transmutes the steel-cold light of winter
To the rich lustre of July.

On these lawns and terraces it was always summer;
Time could not touch the old here, or the young.
The air was threaded with gold, and a heavy fragrance
Stole from the bleached wall where the peaches hung,
And purple beneath the gray
Of the spread branches of the cedars of Lebanon
The pools of shadow lay.

You need not pity the dead, you need not pity
The changing hours for their mortality;
For here the dead are alive and the past is eternal,
But they, still living, turn blind eyes to me;
And I, not they,
Watching the friends, watching the self of far-off summers,
Walk as a ghost to-day.