Shades were its boundary; for my strained eye sought
For other limit to its width in vain.
Faint from the entrance came a daylight ray, 5
And distant sound of living men and things;
This, in the encountering darkness passed away,
That, took the tone in which a mourner sings.
I lit a torch at a sepulchral lamp,
Which shot a thread of light amid the gloom; 10
And feebly burning ’gainst the rolling damp,