There’s a time at night when the moon is full
And the breakers pound the beach,
The world is dark and asleep, the gull
Lies nesting at the breach,
It’s then that the stirrings from the depths
Reach out, like a dead man’s hand,
And shortly, out of the rivulets
There are footprints on the sand.

They come ashore and they stand awhile
And they point, this way and that,
Considering well which way to go
As the waves erase their tracks,
Then a breeze picks up and it parts the grass
In a line up from the shore,
And the shape of feet on a farmer’s stile
Are left, till they dry once more.

While up on the rise, a cottage sits
With a single faint night-light,
Its simple beam like a beacon streams
Through the tar-black pitch of night,
While deep inside in a cosy room
Sleeps a girl called Carolyn,
Who tosses fretfully in the gloom
As she dreams the words, ‘Come in!’

The footsteps up from the field below
Stand still at the old front door,
The lock is rusty, the hinges swing
For an inch, or maybe more,
The wind is moaning and soughing now
And the door is soon ajar,
As the footsteps enter that sacred place
Under the evening star.

And Carolyn lies and moans aloud
As his death invades her sleep,
Since ever the depths had formed his shroud
All she had done was weep,
The footprints stood, facing her bed
For an age it seemed, they kept
A silent vigil, there by her head
When she woke, the sheets were wet.

David Lewis Paget