Thy tears fall like the waters of a well,
And drip in silver notes upon the sands.
What is thy sorrow? Ah, what man can tell
The shapeless fancies that unwelcome dwell
Within thy brain, the spectres, dark and wild
That haunt the spirit of a child?
Mayhap thou weepest for the embattled lands,
The bloody ruin of decaying realms
That a war overwhelms
And buries deep in the dust of history?
He raises his wet eyes and looks at me,
His boyish face full of a yearning,
An ancient pain,
As of a ghost long dead who yearns to live again,
And answers, "In myself, thy thoughts returning
To other times shall slumber in the past,
And be a child again, and die at last
In the protecting arms of our great Mother
Who bore us both, O well-beloved brother.
Thou in thy sorry dreams, I in my childish grief,
Thy heart in tears, mine eyes amazed with tears,
Thy sorrow rich with the repining years,
My sorrow frail as childhood, and as brief."
Who art thou, haunting boy, nocturnal elf?
"I am the Dead; the Dead that was thyself."
Then falls a darkness on that starless shore.
Afar I hear the closing of a door....

I see on a sharp hill above the Styx,
The bruised Christ upon his crucifix,