PULVIS ET UMBRA.
(A Sestina.)
Along the crowded streets I walk and think
How I, a shadow, pace among the shades,
For I and all men seem to me unreal:
Foam that the seas of God, which cover all
Cast on the air a moment, shadows thrown
In moving westward by the Moon of Death.
Oh, shall it set at last, that orb of Death?
May any morning follow? As I think,
From one surmise upon another thrown,
My very thoughts appear to me as shades-
Shades, like the prisoning self that bounds them all,
Shades, like the transient world, and as unreal.
But other hours there be when I, unreal,
When only I, vague in a conscious Death,
Move through the mass of men unseen by all;
I move along their ways, I feel and think,
Yet am more light than echoes, or the shades
That hide me, from their stronger bodies thrown.
And better moments come, when, overthrown
All round me, lie the ruins of the unreal
And momentary world, as thin as shades;
When I alone, triumphant over Death,
Eternal, vast, fill with the thoughts I think,
And with my single soul the frame of all.
Ah, for a moment could I grasp it all!
Ah, could but I (poor wrestler often thrown)
Once grapple with the truth, oh then, I think,
Assured of which is living, which unreal,
I would not murmur, though among the shades
My lot were cast, among the shades and Death.
"One thing is true," I said, "and that is Death,"
And yet it may be God disproves it all;
And Death may be a passage from the shades,
And films on our beclouded senses thrown;
And Death may be a step beyond the Unreal
Towards the Thought that answers all I think.
In vain I think. O moon-like thought of Death,
All is unreal beneath thee, uncertain all,
Dim moon-ray thrown along a world of shades.
A. Mary F. Robinson.