Horror of human ruin, the shattered sheaths of the spirit,
Horror men pray to forget, and the tongue refuses to tell it,—
Now was the taintless light of the large moon shed out of heaven,
Glory unchanged as the Face of the Father of Lights, to whom upward
Gropes the groaning world.
On the sweet summer grass in the moonlight,
Long, by the tent of his leader, a watcher lay patiently waiting,
Waiting the great Gray Captain, so many times hailed as the victor
On those fields foregone; and the far-away cities had feared him.
Ever with wild lost cry the whippoorwill cried in the woodland.