Of tormenting woe and tortured silences?

From the far reaches of the marshland

Along and beyond the crescent-bed of the sea-sand

What tempest on the wave's-strings makes its cadences?

The distant hills dimmed like dull and forgotten dreams

Raise their shadowy heads where pour in streams

The tears of the heart-hollowed mourners of the skies;

While into the turgid heart of the fens at their feet

Turbidly fall and dance sheet upon sheet

To the measureless measure of the wind's empty sighs.

No light but a dismal gray, that neither throbs nor quivers

On the torn banks of the heavens' cloud-rivers,

But stonily stands still, like death that dies never.

[53]

Not-dead, but a weeping world bathing its corpses—

Its memories, its lost hopes, in regret's hearses

To be buried in flowerless graves, without incense or prayer.

It writhes in agony, rolls out in undulating rills,

This rain-melody from the sea-waves to the farthest hills,

Thence to the dreary distance lost to hearing or sight.

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