Night and Morning

In the grey cathedral,
In the aisles of twilight,
Wails an awful music.
Whelming my drowned spirit
Fathom-deep in woe.
The hoar stone of ages
Palpitates disaster.
Breathes aware with sorrow,
Weighs me down to death !
All the immense wan spaces
Pregnant with dead faces,
Cold, carven forms arise :
And grey walls bring forth !
Vasty vans of darkness,
Swordsweeps of desolation,
Hound me to dim death !
Born from the deep ocean
Of sounding mystery.
In the ghostly forest
Of colossal pillars
Grows a dread procession :
Tramp ! tramp ! tramp !
Phantoms vast, sepulchral,
With dim downward eyes.
Move where yawns a dreary
Fathomless abyss.
What do they bear ? they bear hiiv
My All, my Heart, my Heaven !
They let him fall therein !
Fall ! fall ! fall !
Fall ever in the abyss !
And my soul wails over,
Yearns to him in vain !
' Cruel world I O cruel spirit
Of the world, with ne'er a heart !
All in vain I moan imploring ;
Sleep ! sleep ! sleep !

In the grey cathedral
Dawn red rays of morning.
And a sweet low music
Lifts me from the grave.
My dead pulses flutter.
As in spring the leaflet,
Or young flower awaking,
Wooed by the warm South . . .
... A calm saint on a pinnacle
Smiles in the day-dawn ;
Monumental marble
With warm life-blood glows,
Sweet small singers warble
" Live ! live ! live !"
And lo ! a rush of angels,
A cloud of spirits bright
P'rom soft sun-rays of opal.
Woven to nests of light,
Among celestial branchings
Of the embowered height.
Bear me back my darling,
Smiling, rosed, alive.
Alive ! alive ! alive !
They only meant to scare me.
All was but in play ;
The dismal shades were angels
From my Father's day ;
Our Father knows why we must weep ;
He wipes our tears away.

But if a hair might perish
From his sweet tendrilled head,
God would be the devil,
Love and Truth were dead,
Man a maniac, mooning
A moment plausibly,
Joy an idiot fooling.
And life Death's leprosy !
No ! no ! no !
An Eye rules the wild sea
Of human misery !