The Touch

We who have heard the fairies’ laughter peeling
Through dim-lit hollows in the lonely hills,
Have seen pale shadows through the deep glens stealing,
Or followed in their track down mountain gills:

We who have heard their low, sad music ringing
Across some shining river deep in the wood,
And felt the unseen host sweep past us, singing,
On wild, wet roads clean-washed by storm and flood:

We find no peace nor rest in life thereafter,
For us no more the homely house-fire gleams;
There’s nothing real but fairy songs and laughter,
And shadows, and the twilight world of dreams.

(source: Mychurachan by Mona Douglas (1917); photograph)