And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone horizon Ye, follow-the bier Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with And make her grave green with tear on Come, months, come away, From November to May, In your saddest array; Follow the bier Of the dead cold year, tear. THE WANING MOON AND like a dying lady, lean and pale, Who totters forth, wrapt in a gauzy veil, Out of her chamber, led by the insane And feeble wanderings of her fading brain, The moon arose up in the murky east, A white and shapeless mass. TO THE MOON I ART thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth,— And ever changing, like a joyless eye That finds no object worth its constancy? II Thou chosen sister of the spirit, That gazes on thee till in thee it pities... DEATH I And like dim shadows watch by her DEATH is here and death is there, sepulchre. 11 Death is busy everywhere, All around, within, beneath, The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm Above is death-and we are death. is crawling, The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling For the year; II Death has set his mark and seal On all we are and all we feel, The blithe swallows are flown, and the On all we know and all we fear, The willow leaves that glanced in the And the firm foliage of the larger trees. light breeze, From a single cloud the lightning flashes, ing; the sound Is bellowing underground. It was a winter such as when birds die makes Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes A wrinkled clod as hard as brick; and when, Among their children, comfortable men Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold: Alas then for the homeless beggar old! THE TOWER OF FAMINE Of an extinguished people; so that pity Weeps o'er the shipwrecks of oblivion's wave, There stands the Tower of Famine. It is built Which we all tread, a cavern huge and YE hasten to the grave! What seek ye gaunt; Around it rages an unceasing strife Of shadows, like the restless clouds that haunt there, Ye restless thoughts and busy purposes Of the idle brain, which the world's livery wear? The gap of some cleft mountain, lifted Oh thou quick heart which pantest to high Into the whirlwinds of the upper sky. possess All that pale expectation feigneth fair! Thou vainly curious mind which wouldest While the meek blest sit smiling; if guess Despair Whence thou didst come, and whither And Hate, the rapid bloodhounds with which Terror thou must go, And all that never yet was known Hunts through the world the homeless would know Oh, whither hasten ye, that thus ye steps of Error, Are the true secrets of the commonweal Bloodier than is revenge Then send the priests to every hearth and home To preach the burning wrath which is to |