Page:Poems and Baudelaire Flowers.djvu/74

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the low heavy sky weighs like a lid
 * Upon the spirit aching for the light,

And all the wide horizon’s line is hid
 * By a black day sadder than any night;

When the changed earth is but a dungeon dank
 * Where batlike Hope goes blindly fluttering

And, striking wall and roof and mouldered plank,
 * Bruises his tender head and timid wing;

When like grim prison-bars stretch down the thin,
 * Straight, rigid pillars of the endless rain,

And the dumb throngs of infamous spiders spin
 * Their meshes in the caverns of the brain;—

Suddenly, bells leap forth into the air,
 * Hurling a hideous uproar to the sky

As 'twere a band of homeless spirits who fare
 * Through the strange heavens, wailing stubbornly.

And hearses, without drum or instrument,
 * File slowly through my soul; crushed, sorrowful,

Weeps Hope, and Grief, fierce and omnipotent,
 * Plants his black banner on my drooping skull.