A foggy afternoon

Round all the house such ghostly noises go,
As keep us by the fire the dull day through.
On creeps the fog, and blots the ships from view,
Reaches the wharf, and heaps it as with snow,
Till, deep in drifts, the worn gray timbers show;
Till bough by bough vanish the willows few,
And roof by roof the sodden highway too.
Worldless we sit; the noises ghostlier grow.
But once — a break! and there, across the street,
Beneath a tattered awning stands a lad,
With store of purple violets and white.
Two lovers stop to buy his blossoms sweet;
She pins them at her throat, and, slim and glad,
They onward pass. turn spectral, fade from sight.