Weird Tales/Volume 10/Issue 4/Obliteration
Obliteration
When the fires are burned to ashes,
And the hearth is gray and cold,
When the final sound of thunder
From the battlefield has rolled;
When the heart at length is silenced,
And the brain at last is stark,
Let me go then like a candle
Quenched and stifled in the dark
To a long sleep, and a deep one,
With no soul's unsteady light
Burning like a candle guttering
In the fearfulness of night.
For a candle flame in midnight
Is a mockery of the noon,
And its shadows stand out ghoulish
In the starlight or the moon.
But the slumberer is restful
Lost in darknesses profound,
All unconscious of black shadows
That may hover close around.
Oh, a long sleep, and a deep one!
With no soul's, uncertain glow
To arouse the spectral vapors
Of the Border. . . . when I go.