caves of pain. Soon shall I creep no more about thee, orb Of Heaven, for all my thews grow stark and dry. When the years drag me to my end--absorb, Embrace, enfold, caress me, ere I die!

A song fours down from the skies, a plangent song of triumph from the Moon. Yet it is not her voice, but that of the Moon Wraith. She reigns in mockery and malice upon her peaks in gulfs of solitude.

She sings for her who perished long ago. Her voice is flung exulting over the ruins.

The Phantasm turns the ashen sphere about the rusted poles.

The mystery of the Moons invisible hemisphere is now revealed.

It too is desolation.

 

 

 

 

SONG OF THE MOON WRAITH

THEY are dying! all are dying! Night shall force Us headlong through her shoreless regions blind. Then must I, an empty lamp, around the corse Of Earth my dark, unending spirals wind. I loved the Sun. My heart was molten stone, Like Earth my face for him with beauty bloomed, Ere lust and hatred scarred my every zone, And passion tore my beauty and consumed. They are dying! I have waited lone and long,--  Long have hung, a warning skull that gleamed Above their feast of Life and Love;--their song Is ended, and the Sun sheds blood. They dreamed. Earth that called me cold and pale, grows pale and cold,--  Now wearily her groaning axle turns Those alternating glories that she rolled To mock my ashen tombs and crater-urns! No more her midnight ghouls nor lovers creep To curse or bless my light; my shadow crawls Like some dark moth upon her. I shall sleep Equal with her in death. The tyrant falls!

The Element of Earth, waste and inert, hears at last the cry of the Mother-globe.

Her crests and peaks, her vales and plains, lie white and whelmed with snow.

The mountain ranges draw their icy shrouds over the faces of 

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