rd my body die.

And, dumbly, 'thwart a dreader deep
I drifted, as on awful sleep,
Where sorrows burn, and never weep ...

Delirium reigned. Fell darkness dire,
Vague terror, shapeless dole.
Forever climbing ghats of fire
I struggled to a goal
Where, lone upon the suttee pyre,
I saw my life's long-lost desire--
The widow of my soul!

Far and far through smoke-red light
I saw her beckoning stand;
Anon, like a burning bird in fright,
She fled with a shriek through the lurid night,
And I wailed like a lost soul banned;
And an echo flew like an anguished sprite
And wailed in a hollow land.

Then utter loss: and there was nought.
My sentience wholly sped:
No sound, no feeling, sight, or thought:
Yet I knew with a vacuous dread
I lay a thing by God unsought,--
Dead, dead,--for ever dead ...

Slow ages seemed to have their will:
And, moving toward the prime,
Th' Eternal Immanency still
Breathed in the senseless lime,
Till a dead thing felt the procreant thrill,
And shuddered back to time.

It might have been ten thousand years
That over me had run;
It might have been ten thousand years
I had not sensed the sun.--
Oh God, how much of sin that sears,
How many, many bitter years
Till soul from dust be won?
Oh Lord of Light, make sweet their tears
Who never see the sun!-- ...

Mean as the dust, through the volant vast
Flung like chaff, as ashes cast
To the nether storms, I sank, pride past,
On the waiting wings of the First and Last ...

Slowly, slowly came the grey
Where all was dark before.
Some monster left its mangled prey
Because the night was o'er:
And, sick beside an Indian shore,
I knew that it was day--

And strangely cared. Some cloudy pain
Seemed from my being rolled.
Afar upon a misty plain
The grey was turning gold.
I slept, and dreamt of rustling rain
On leaves in summers old.

And faintly in my dream the corn
Shook under English skies;
To wreathe with silvery song the morn
I saw the laverock rise;
And I saw the Dead by a snow-white thorn,
Touched with the blush of a mounting morn,
Singing in paradise;
And a seraph blew on a golden horn;
And I saw with a mild surmise

White sha