Page:The city of dreadful night - and other poems (IA cityofdreadfulni00thomrich).pdf/77

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And stir no sound. Thy drooping hands infold
Their frail white fingers; and, unconscious, hold
A poppy-wreath, thine anodyne of grace.

Thy hair is like a twilight round thy head:
Thine eyes are shadowed wells, from Lethe-stream
With drowsy subterranean waters fed;
Obscurely deep, without a stir or gleam;
The gazer drinks in from them with his gaze
An opiate charm to curtain all his days,
A passive languor of oblivious dream.

Thou hauntest twilight regions, and the trance
Of moonless nights when stars are few and wan:
Within black woods; or over the expanse
Of desert seas abysmal; or upon
Old solitary shores whose populous graves
Are rocked in rest by ever-moaning waves;
Or through vast ruined cities still and lone.

The weak, the weary, and the desolate,
The poor, the mean, the outcast, the opprest,
All trodden down beneath the march of Fate,
Thou gatherest, loving Sister, to thy breast,