What and wherefore is this doom funereal?
Whence this Tide of Being’s flow and ebb?
Why rends Destiny the fine material
Of Existence’s divinest web?
Vainly ask we!—Dim age calls to dim age—
Answer, save an echo, cometh none—
Here stands Man, of Life in Death an image,
There, invisibly, The Living One!
Storm-clouds lour and muster in the Distance—
While, begirt with wrecks by sea and land,