I never feared the light;
I shrank from no one’s sight;
I saw the world was right;
I always slept at night.”
But in an evil hour she married, “on the sly.” Now three pale children fight and whine all day; her “man” gets drunk; her head and her bones are sore; and her heart is hacked; and she sings—
“Now I fear the light;
I shrink from every sight;
I see there’s nothing right;
I hope to die to-night.”
“After the End” is in a very different key. It is more universal. Kings and queens, as well as the humblest of their subjects, may well cry out, into the unknown dark—