In the Morning

A desert, treeless, boundless,

The low sun round and red,

Air stifling, moveless, soundless—

And I alone with my dead.

Her head lay on my shoulder,

The crimson light ebbed fast;

Her face grew paler, colder—

The face of my own dead Past.

Then darkness, black and frightful,

Dropped from the eastern sky,

With never a star, but a night-full

Of horrors creeping by.

I saw how fiercely glistened

Their mad eyes, two by two,—

They screamed, and as I listened

They laughed like a demon crew.

See how that huge hyena

Grows bolder than the rest—

Slinks—snarls—in the arena,

For the corpse upon my breast!

I laughed like the brutes around me,

I snarled on my stony bed,

I severed the ties that bound me

And gnashed upon the dead.

The tawny-sided creatures,

Red claw and dripping fang,

The hideous, grinning features,

The awful mirth that rang,—

All vanished. Starless, boundless,

The night stretched o’er my head.

In the gray dawn, soulless, soundless,

I sat alone with my dead.

Then rustling forms drew nearer.

By the faint approaching day

The frightful things grew clearer,—

Great, unclean birds of prey

And carrion beasts, that waited

Until, on the booty rare,

Their hunger foul should be sated

With my poor Past, lying there.

Oh, I, too, sullen-hearted,

No word of anguish said;

Till bird and beast departed

I waited—dumb—by the dead.

The white east flickered with fire,

A lark flew singing by,

The glad light mounted higher,

Up-spread o’er all the sky.

My burden, fair and human,

Still rested on my hands,

When lo! a gracious Woman,

Swift walking o’er the sands,

Until she stood before me,

Breathed words of hope and cheer;

Her radiant eyes were o’er me,

Her presence warm and near,

And at her voice—oh, wonder!—

The dead herself awoke;

The birds no longer shunned her,

She smiled, and moved, and spoke,

Then, “Future” named, to guide me

She softly sprang away;

The Woman stayed beside me—

Sun rose—it was full day.