Читать книгу The Black Panther: A book of poems онлайн

2 страница из 9

His wrath is hurled upon the trembling bars,

The eternal passion stretches me apart,

And I lie silent—but my body shakes.

ssss1

ssss1

Night has its fear:

As the slow dusk advances, and the day

Fades out in fire along the starry way,

The ancient doubt draws near.

Vague shapes of dread—

Soft owl, or moth, and timid, twittering things—

Move through the growing dark; on furtive wings

The bat flits overhead.

And in the house

The death-watch ticks, the dust of time is stirred

With timorous footfalls, in the night is heard

The gnawing of the mouse.

Through the old room

What phantoms throng, what shapes that to and fro

Tremble, and lips that laughed here long ago—

Gone back into the gloom!

A whip-poor-will

Bleakly across the baleful country cries

From a blurred mouth; and from the west replies

Echo—and all is still.

Now from her shell,

Her body’s prison, with the ancient doubt

And terror stricken, the scared soul looks out,

Asking if all be well.

Great kings have been,