Two candles, tall sentry, beside an earth mound
A dream with wings broken that trail to the ground
Loud flung from the belfry calamitous chime
'Tis thus that you passed o'er the bound'ries of time
Gone are the hours when the heavens entire
Flowed rivers of milk and grew flowers of fire
O'er your breast like a saint your white arms crossed in prayer
And gold on the water, and silver in the air
And I ask times unending my soul torn with doubt
O why, pallid angel, your light has gone out
For were you not blameless and wonderfully fair
Have you gone to rekindle a star in despair
Maybe that one day the arched heavens will sunder
And down through their break all the emptiness thunder
Void's night o'er the earth its vast nothing extending
The loot of an instant of death without ending.
O, death is chaos, an ocean of stars gleaming
While life is a quagmire of doubts and of dreaming
Oh, death is an aeon of sun-blazoned spheres
While life but a legend of wailing and tears
O, what is the meaning? What sense does agree
The end of such beauty, that had got to be
O, tell me the meaning. This angel or clod
I find on her forehead no witness of God
I see dreams incarnate that after dreams chase
I see dreams incarnate that after dreams chase
But that tumble in tombs ere the end of the race
And I search in my soul how this horror to fly
To laugh like a madman? To curse or to cry