Page:Stanzas on an Ancient Superstition (1864).djvu/6

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Another Cycle ends; at midnight ends,
 * To-night! and trembling thousands wait to die.

Their agonizing fear together blends
 * The strange portents of earth and air and sky,
 * With mystic words of ancient prophecy,

That told the terrors of this dolorous night:
 * When star by star should vanish from on high;

And prayer, and vow, and sacrificial rite Should fail to save one beam from all the realms of light.

When thro’ the awful gloom the voice of man,
 * Feebler and feebler heard, should pass away:

And living forms faint, helpless, groping, wan,
 * To loathsome reptiles fall an easy prey;
 * Till Death, relentless still, should end his sway,

His victory o’er—his sable banner furled—
 * And leave to dismal stream, and surging sea,

And crumbling rocks, down the dark valleys hurled, To sound their echoing dirge, and mourn a lifeless world.

In artless rhyme I thought, forsooth, to tell
 * Only of one who durst with boldness stand,

That fearful night, and all that him befell.
 * For when their warrior host and priestly band
 * I called, to bare their breasts at my command,

And claimed their monarch’s voice to fill my song,
 * They spurned my feeble spell and borrowed wand;

Yet words and sighs that to deep woe belong The naming of that night wrung from the flitting throng.