 | Fantasy and Passion |  |
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THE ATONEMENT.
Dull as a withered flower, along the West,
The sad moon dropt at dawn through brightening air,
And gazing on her calm and colorless breast,
I marked the shadowy desolations there!
The sad moon dropt at dawn through brightening air,
And gazing on her calm and colorless breast,
I marked the shadowy desolations there!
Then while the vanishing night grew more remote,
Aided of some new sense. I seemed to hear
A voice of strange monotonous murmur float
Miraculously down from that far sphere.
Aided of some new sense. I seemed to hear
A voice of strange monotonous murmur float
Miraculously down from that far sphere.
“Forever,” the mysterious voice made moan,
“I terribly expiate a mighty crime;
I wander about this ghastly world alone,
And shall be wandering till the end of time!
“I terribly expiate a mighty crime;
I wander about this ghastly world alone,
And shall be wandering till the end of time!
“No animate thing at all my sight beholds,
No glimmer of any grass or sign of tree.
One monstrous lethargy of stagnation folds
The appalling solitudes that compass me!
No glimmer of any grass or sign of tree.
One monstrous lethargy of stagnation folds
The appalling solitudes that compass me!
“Great valleylands in vapory distance die,
Clammy with dews, with skull-shaped stones o'er-strewn,
And pale against the unchanging arch of sky
Tower up these awful mountains of the moon!
Clammy with dews, with skull-shaped stones o'er-strewn,
And pale against the unchanging arch of sky
Tower up these awful mountains of the moon!
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And sometimes, journeying on with low-bowed head,
I meet old bones that wondrous things avow
Of years before God touched this planet I tread
With the woful death-in-life that shrouds it now!
I meet old bones that wondrous things avow
Of years before God touched this planet I tread
With the woful death-in-life that shrouds it now!
“And often I so abhor this lonely lot
That my sick spirit a keen delight would take
In seeing some white ghost haunt some dusky spot,
Or setting a naked foot on some cold snake!
That my sick spirit a keen delight would take
In seeing some white ghost haunt some dusky spot,
Or setting a naked foot on some cold snake!
“But not even such poor boon I dare expect,
While ever wandering through this loathsome land,
With hair and beard one tangle of red neglect,
And thirty pieces of silver in my hand!”
While ever wandering through this loathsome land,
With hair and beard one tangle of red neglect,
And thirty pieces of silver in my hand!”
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