Then I beheld through eyes with tears suffused,
And deemed at first ’twas blindness thence ensuing;
Abel was gone, and you were gone, my son—
Gone, and yet not gone; yea, I seemed to see
The decomposing of those coloured lines
Which we called you, their fusion into one,
And therewithal their vanishing and end.
And Eve said to me, ‘Adam, in the day
When in the inexistent void I heard God’s voice,
An awful whisper, bidding me to be,