A MOMENT since his breath dissolved in air! And now divorced from life's last hectic glow, He joins the old ghostly years of long ago, In some cloud-folded realm of vague despair; Ah me! the unsceptred years that wander there! With cold, wan hands, and faces white as snow, And echoes of dead voices quavering low The phantom-burden of long-perished care! Perchance all unsubstantialized and gray, Time's earliest year now greets his last, deceased; Or he that dumbly gazed on Adam's fall, Palely emerging from the shadowy east, With flickering semblance of cold crown and pall, Clothes the dim ghost of him just passed away! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...RESCUE by JEAN STARR UNTERMEYER THE BEST [THING IN THE WORLD] by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING FRIENDSHIP [OR, THE TRUE FRIEND] by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AT MAGNOLIA CEMETERY by HENRY TIMROD THE MERRIMAC by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER |