Spectres That Grieve
“It is not death that harrows us,” they lipped,“The soundless cell is in itself relief,For life is an unfenced flower, benumbed and nippedAt unawares, and at its best but brief.”
The speakers, sundry phantoms of the gone,Had risen like filmy flames of phosphor dye,As if the palest of sheet lightnings shoneFrom the sward near me, as from a nether sky.
And much surprised was I that, spent and dead,They should not, like the many, be at rest,But stray as apparitions; hence I said,“Why, having slipped life, hark you back distressed?
“We are among the few death sets not free,The hurt, misrepresented names, who comeAt each year’s brink, and cry to HistoryTo do them justice, or go past them dumb.
“We are stript of rights; our shames lie unredressed,Our deeds in full anatomy are not shown,Our words in morsels merely are expressedOn the scriptured page, our motives blurred, unknown.”
Then all these shaken slighted visitants spedInto the vague, and left me musing thereOn fames that well might instance what they had said,Until the New-Year’s dawn strode up the air.
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