Wild years that are to be
The sad completion of my weary life,
In ghostly mantles of despairing strife
Your phanton dimness darkly shadows me!
Gaunt demons dancing from your horrid halls
Entwine my soul in gloomy arms of woe,
While mystic fancies to my madness show
The monsters on your walls.

Your forms are skeletons,
Whose bony hands with mortal fingers play,
Where grinning skulls are heaping on the way,
And airy specters meet the timid ones;
Death drops his arrows from your sullen skies,
Destruction dances in your noisome shades,
And in the dreadful darkness of your glades
The horrid shriekings rise.

There in your cycles are
Dark valleys where my weary feet must go,
Though devils of disaster hurl and throw
Their awful sorrows from the fortunes far;
No hands of pleasure can presume to part
The clouded curtains of impending care,
And hissing serpents of insane despair
Pour poison in my heart.

O, years that are to be,
Among your solitudes I, dreaming, grope;