Poems (Henley)/Space and dread and the dark
XVI
Space and dread and the dark—Over a livid stretch of skyCloud-monsters crawling, like a funeral trainOf huge, primeval presencesStooping beneath the weightOf some enormous, rudimentary grief;While in the haunting lonelinessThe far sea waits and wanders with a soundAs of the trailing skirts of Destiny,Passing unseenTo some immitigable endWith her grey henchman, Death.
What larve, what spectre is thisThrilling the wilderness to lifeAs with the bodily shape of Fear?What but a desperate sense,A strong foreboding of those dim,Interminable continents, forlorn And many-silenced, in a duskInviolable utterly, and deadAs the poor dead it huddles and swarms and styesIn hugger-mugger through eternity?
Life—life—let there be life!Better a thousand times the roaring hoursWhen wave and wind,Like the Arch-Murderer in flightFrom the Avenger at his heel,Storm through the desolate fastnessesAnd wild waste places of the world!
Life—give me life until the end,That at the very top of being,The battle-spirit shouting in my blood,Out of the reddest hell of the fightI may be snatched and flungInto the everlasting lull,The immortal, incommunicable dream.