Page:The city of dreadful night - and other poems (IA cityofdreadfulni00thomrich).pdf/91

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XXV.

It lay and preached, as dumb things do,

More powerfully than tongues can prate;
Though life be torture through and through,
Man is but weak to plain of fate:
The drear path crawls on drearier still
To wounded feet and hopeless breast?
Well, he can lie down where he will,
And straight all ends in endless rest.

XXVI.

And while the black night nothing saw,

And till the cold morn came at last,
That old bed held the room in awe
With tales of its experience vast.
It thrilled the gloom; it told such tales
Of human sorrows and delights,
Of fever moans and infant wails,
Of births and deaths and bridal nights.