Page:Songs, Legends, and Ballads.djvu/23

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THE SHADOW.
11

But these are minor deities
That cling to human sight:
Our twilight they—but Right and Wrong
Are clear as day and night.
We know the Truth: but falsehood
With our lives is so inwove—
Our Senates vote down Jesus
As old Rome degraded Jove!



THE SHADOW.


THERE is a shadow on the sunny wall,
Dark and forbidding, like a bode of ill;
Go, drive it thence. Alas, such shadows fall
From real things, nor may be moved at will.

There is a shadow on my heart to-day,
A cloudy grief condensing to a tear:
Alas, I cannot drive its gloom away—
Some sin or sorrow casts the shapeless fear.