David Lewis Paget writes

Return of the Wanderer

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.