Man's Days

From sorrow unto sorrow man progresses.
If length of days be his; till, come at last,
Nigh to that realm unknowable and vast,
Which hides the whole world's dead in its recesses.
Where iron night on every sleeper presses.
In its strange neighborhood he moves aghast;
Remembering intermittently his past,
Lulled sometimes by a gentle ghost's caresses.

He moves down ways and by-ways listlessly, —
A traveller who, having paid his score,
Knowing therewith he hath to do no more.
Waits till the ship already in sight be free
To bear him back to his far, natal shore.
Back though the darkness and the awful sea.