The Star-Treader and Other Poems

How dense the glooms of Death, impervious

To aught of old memorial light! How strait

The sunless road, suspended, separate,

That leads to later birth! Untremulous

With any secret morn of stars, to us

The Past is closed as with division great

Of planet-girdling seas—unknown its gate,

Beyond the mouths of shadows cavernous.

Oh! may it be that Death in kindness strips

The soul of memory's raiment, rendering blind

Our vision, lest surmounted deeps appal,

As when on mountain peaks a glance behind

Betrays with knowledge, and the climber slips

Down gulfs of fear to some enormous fall?