Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/271

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Calm, endless calm! And final oblivion. Calm of the dead, who are resting in vaults Under a heavy slab with its arching scutcheon Of perished kinsmen.

Calm of deadened waves on unquivering oceans, That many a year no vessel has furrowed, That darken in tints of metal and duskiness, Barrenly day upon day

Calm of divine pangs, withering in solitudes, Calm of tottering crosses, blackened in the twilight, In decayed and unpeopled regions, abounding With chillness of horror.

Calm of ancient ships, astray amid oceans, Which in the North are frozen amid eternal ice, Whose crews long have perished beneath the masts, Tortured by hunger.

Calm that is death's, pallid and stiffened, As the countryside at night in the greenish moonrays, Calm of all those, who have fared, but to falter In the midst of the journey. "Conversations with Death" (1904).