The Star-Treader and Other Poems

What hand is this, that unresisted grips

My spirit as with chains, and from the sound

And light of dreams, compels me to the bound

Where darkness waits with wide, expectant lips?

Albeit thereat my footing holds, nor slips,

The threats of that Omnipotence confound

All days and hours of gladness, girt around

With sense of near, unswervable eclipse.

So lies a land whose noon is plagued with whirr

Of bats, than their own shadows swarthier,

Whose flight is traced on roofs of white abodes,

Wherein from court to court, from room to room,

In hieroglyphics of abhorrent doom,

Is slowly trailed the slime of crawling toads.