Page:The Man with the Hoe, Markham, 1900.djvu/135



The Flying Mist

I watch afar the moving Mystery,

The wool-shod, formless terror of the sea—

The Mystery whose lightest touch can change

The world God made to phantasy, death-strange.

Under its spell all things grow old and gray

As they will be beyond the Judgment Day.

All voices, at the lifting of some hand,

Seem calling to us from another land.

Is it the still Power of the Sepulcher

That makes all things the wraiths of things that were?

It touches, one by one, the wayside posts,

And they are gone, a line of hurrying ghosts.

It creeps upon the towns with stealthy feet,

And men are phantoms on a phantom street.

It strikes the towers and they are shafts of air,

Above the spectres passing in the square. 107