DESPONDENCY.

Slow figures in some live remorseless frieze,

The approaching days escapeless and unguessed,

With mask and shroud impenetrably dressed;

Time, whose inexorable destinies

Bear down upon us like impending seas;

And the huge presence of this world, at best

A sightless giant wandering without rest,

Agèd and mad with many miseries.

The weight and measure of these things who knows?

Resting at times beside life's thought-swept stream,

Sobered and stunned with unexpected blows,

We scarcely hear the uproar; life doth seem,

Save for the certain nearness of its woes,

Vain and phantasmal as a sick man's dream.