'Presentiment

WITH saintly grace and reverent tread
She walked among the graves with me;
Her every footfall seemed to be
A benediction on the dead.

The guardian spirit of the place
She seemed, and I some ghost forlorn,
Surprised by the untimely morn
She made with her resplendent face.

Moved by some waywardness of will,
Three paces from the path apart
She stepped and stood—my prescient heart
Was stricken with a passing chill.

My child-lore of the years agone
Remembering, I smiled and thought,
“Who shudders suddenly at naught,
His grave is being trod upon.”

But now I know that it was more
Than idle fancy. O, my sweet,
I did not know such little feet
Could make a buried heart so sore!

Ambrose Bierce'