IN DEEPER VEIN.

By Edwin Carty Ranck

The way was dark within the gloomy church-yard,

As I wandered through the woodland near the stream,

With slow and heavy tread

Through a city of the dead,

When suddenly I heard a dreadful scream.

My heart gave frantic leap, as when the roebuck

Is started by the clamor of the chase,

And I halted all atremble

In the vain hope to dissemble,

Or cloak the leaden pallor on my face.

‘ Twas in the ghostly month of grim December,

The frozen winds were bitter in their cry

And I muttered half aloud

To that white and silent crowd:

“‘ Tis a somber month to live in or to die.”

And then as if in answer to my whisper,

Came a voice of some foul fiend from Hell:

“No longer live say I,

‘ Tis better far to die

And let the falling snow-flakes sound the knell.”

Perched upon a tombstone sat the creature

Grewsome as an unquenched, burning lust.

Sitting livid there

With an open-coffin stare —

A stare that seemed the mocking of the just.

And in my thoughts the dreadful thing is sitting —

Sitting there with eyelids red and blear,

And see it there I will

‘ Til my restless soul is still

And the earth-clods roll and rumble on my bier.