Page:The Soul of a Century.djvu/130

  A white glow of light you poured into my soul’s lamp, ’Til in an agony of red it bled into the dark. I walked in thought beneath the day’s ceiling, cold and damp As in the dreaded melancholies of a darkened park.

And I list to the Clocks of The Night, as through the dark they toll ’Til on the tower of the City Eternal the metallic tears will awake An angelic Rhapsody, falling upon my waiting soul; Striking my final hour, the Secret’s Angelus will quake

On an aged instrument’s metallic strings I heard a rhythmic fall of a harp’s far distant din, As a tearful dew of feeble tones, this cadence clings To the faint vibrating wires strung within.

Like some heavy scent a thought within my soul awoke, And a song I used to hear in the days of my youthful tears Breathed into my cheeks, and grasping my hand and cloak It led me into the stilled garden of by-gone years.

Heavenly beauty shone with the constellations glistening storm, Upon the quiet waters of time, a starry myth delayed, Where in a casket of glass like a saint’s lifeless form In a shroud of faded Springs, my wasted youth was laid.

A blush of rosy dreams upon the cheeks had bloomed, Like a diadem the jewels of my tears shone through Upon the forehead I had embalmed and gently groomed With scented treasures of memories bom anew.

I saw the warmth of long dead charms/ that tempted once the eye Beneath the flimsy veil woven at life’s first dawn, The glow of lingering looks that buried within me lie And kisses without life/ whose flames are forever gone

The grapes embittered blood/ that was not my ambition’s sap, And the fervor of embrace that cooled with thought, The rain of drifted blooms, that fell into my lap And withered beneath my touch and turned to naught.