The world seemed all a hollow ghost
That would dissolve away;
And life itself a random boast
Of elements at play;
And time a swift elusive gleam,
And man the mockery of a dream,
A foam-bell to a moment's beam
Flung from the spray.
I had worshipped her with sacred sighs,
Loved with the love that wondereth;
My life had found her maiden-wise,
And sweeter than the rose's breath;
Lit by a soul in paradise
The lights within her holy eyes,
The lady loved of death ...
Bereft, forlorn, by passion driven,
And blanched with loss, by suffering riven,
With impious heart I fled from Heaven ...
Thought like a frost gripped all the brain:
With frozen tears opprest,
The conscious blood with sullen pain
Lunged at the callous breast,
Where hope and love, a pallid twain,
Sat with a ghoul for guest.
Over the watery wastes I fled
Where'er dim desolation led
Beneath sad sun and moon!
For faith was dead, and joy was dead,
And love was where the phantoms tread,
And bitterness was passion's bread:
"Grant, jester Death," I, laughing, said,
"Thy haggard fool a boon!" ...
And unforgiving, unforgiven,
A derelict, by tempest driven,
I drave beneath the breadth of heaven ...
Grim sorrow fell on all things fair;
To dust was turned the lover's breath.
Ah longing, like a pariah bare,
And passion, led by lewd despair
To kiss the smelling jowl of death!
As in a sunless cavern cold,
Like one who flies a crime,
Fearful, and old as God is old,
The spirit shrank from time;
For a stifled scream was the angry gold
Of the weird sunset, and the noonday bold
Was the stare on the face of a crime.
I saw as brain-blurred drunkards see;
I felt, yet could not feel;
I seemed in moving time to be
In nerveless immobility
As dust upon a wheel.
Some world material moved around,
Mazed breadths of spume and brine;
Strange voices spake as from a bound
Far off, I answered with a sound,
Nor knew the answer mine;
And sometimes like a weary hound
I heard the darkness whine.