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.

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.