FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   >>  
. Ah longing, like a pariah bare, And passion, led by lewd despair To kiss the smelling jowl of death! As in a sunless cavern cold, Like one who flies a crime, Fearful, and old as God is old, The spirit shrank from time; For a stifled scream was the angry gold Of the weird sunset, and the noonday bold Was the stare on the face of a crime. I saw as brain-blurred drunkards see; I felt, yet could not feel; I seemed in moving time to be In nerveless immobility As dust upon a wheel. Some world material moved around, Mazed breadths of spume and brine; Strange voices spake as from a bound Far off, I answered with a sound, Nor knew the answer mine; And sometimes like a weary hound I heard the darkness whine. In throbbing night 'twixt sleep and sleep My tortured spirit heard A wail that wandered down the deep, A sorrow on the windy deep Wail like a wounded bird; And I wept as a haunted man doth weep Who dare not speak a word. Sometimes I sensed heaven's bellied gloom, Storm like dumb and pregnant doom Scowl on the waters wild; Or tempest 'neath a plunging sky Down crashing waves with haunting cry Scream like a tortured child; A blind thing staggering in the night Strained, groaning, 'gainst a pervious power That flashed and eddied, wild and white, That wheeled and wailed from hour to hour; And, somewhere, strangely burned to sight Dawn like a doom a-flower ... On ever onward, darkly driven, A soul, unsheltered, and unshriven, With lodestar gone, with raiment riven, Drove in the gale of the wrath of Heaven ... The monsoon blew; the changing stars Rode by in deeper skies. At times between the raking spars I felt the blank moon rise; Or heard the chanties of the tars With a sad, sick surprise. And once a heaven, the sapphire's hue, Flashed o'er the freshening wave; They hurt the heart as laughers do When love stands by a grave. And now a level ocean grey Would lie along a level day, Unwhipt of wing or wind; Or sunset make a carmine stain That sucked like sadness at the brain, And sank into the mind, And touched me with some wandering pain, Some sentience of mankind again. ... And whe
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   >>  



Top keywords:
sunset
 

spirit

 

tortured

 

heaven

 

haunting

 
Scream
 
unsheltered
 

lodestar

 
unshriven
 

raiment


monsoon

 

crashing

 
changing
 

Heaven

 
staggering
 

strangely

 
pervious
 
burned
 

wailed

 

flashed


wheeled

 

darkly

 

Strained

 

eddied

 

driven

 

groaning

 

onward

 

gainst

 

flower

 

carmine


Unwhipt

 
sucked
 

sadness

 

wandering

 

sentience

 
mankind
 

touched

 
stands
 

chanties

 
surprise

raking
 

sapphire

 
laughers
 
Flashed
 

freshening

 

deeper

 
blurred
 

drunkards

 
noonday
 

material