If Spirits Walk

By Sophie Jewett 1861–1909 Sophie Jewett

“I have heard (but not believed) the spirits of the dead
May walk again.”
Winter’s Tale

If spirits walk, Love, when the night climbs slow

The slant footpath where we were wont to go,

Be sure that I shall take the self-same way

To the hill-crest, and shoreward, down the gray,

Sheer, gravelled slope, where vetches straggling grow.

Look for me not when gusts of winter blow,

When at thy pane beat hands of sleet and snow;

I would not come thy dear eyes to affray,

If spirits walk.

But when, in June, the pines are whispering low,

And when their breath plays with thy bright hair so

As some one's fingers once were used to play—

That hour when birds leave song, and children pray,

Keep the old tryst, sweetheart, and thou shalt know

If spirits walk.

Source: The Poems of Sophie Jewett (1910)

Biography

Born in Moravia, New York, poet Sophie Jewett was the daughter of a country doctor. Her childhood was marked by loss and displacement. When she was seven years old, her mother died, and Jewett was summoned from sleep to observe her passing; her father died two years later. After his death, Jewett and her three siblings moved to Buffalo to live with their uncle and grandmother, both of whom died during Jewett’s adolescence.

Jewett . . .

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