Within, is emptiness: the sunlight falls
On faded journals papering its walls;
On advertisement chromos, torn with time
Around a hearth where wasps and spiders build.—
The house is dead: meseems that night of crime
It, too, was shot and killed.
UNANOINTED
I
Upon the Siren-haunted seas, between Fate’s mythic shores,
Within a world of moon and mist, where dusk and daylight wed,
I see a phantom galley and its hull is banked with oars,
With ghostly oars that move to song, a song of dreams long dead:—
“Oh, we are sick of rowing here!
With toil our arms are numb;
With smiting year on weary year
Salt-furrows of the foam:
Our journey’s end is never near,
And will no nearer come—
Beyond our reach the shores appear
Of far Elysium.”
II
Within a land of cataracts and mountains old, and sand,
Beneath whose heavens ruins rise, o’er which the stars burn red,
I see a spectral cavalcade with crucifix in hand
And shadowy armor march and sing, a song of dreams long dead:—
“Oh, we are weary marching on!
Our limbs are travel-worn;
With cross and sword from dawn to dawn
We wend with raiment torn:
The leagues to go, the leagues we’ve gone
Are sand and rock and thorn—
The way is long to Avalon
Beyond the deeps of morn.”