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 | The poems of Madison Cawein |  |
XXX
Of life and of eternity
These are the dreams that came to me:
The one:—A whitened whirl of sea;
A gallows beetling through the rains,
And, tossing in its rusty chains,
Carrion upon the gallows-tree:
Gaunt ravens swarm above and tear
Long strips from shrivelled skin and hair:
A ship hurls pounding on the rocks:
Wild minute-guns boom through the spume
And crashing surf: out of the gloom
The strangled dead leers down and mocks.
These are the dreams that came to me:
The one:—A whitened whirl of sea;
A gallows beetling through the rains,
And, tossing in its rusty chains,
Carrion upon the gallows-tree:
Gaunt ravens swarm above and tear
Long strips from shrivelled skin and hair:
A ship hurls pounding on the rocks:
Wild minute-guns boom through the spume
And crashing surf: out of the gloom
The strangled dead leers down and mocks.
An incorporeal solitude,
Which darkness out of darkness hewed,
The other dream: Enormous deeps
Of naught, where ancient Silence sleeps,
The eldest of Heav'n's Titan brood:—
In unilluminated night,
Vast and insufferable white,
A summit soars: its light, which dyes
Not darkness, of itself is born:
Around its splendor, as in scorn,
Night's dark, defiant chaos lies.
Which darkness out of darkness hewed,
The other dream: Enormous deeps
Of naught, where ancient Silence sleeps,
The eldest of Heav'n's Titan brood:—
In unilluminated night,
Vast and insufferable white,
29
Not darkness, of itself is born:
Around its splendor, as in scorn,
Night's dark, defiant chaos lies.
| The poems of Madison Cawein | |