A Shadow Is a Fickle Thing
A shadow is a fickle thing
Reflections of a darker light
Whose shape is like remembering
Lost legends of the night.
Yonder wakes some ghost some dream
So oft as starry battered skies
Have shed a thousand shattered beams
On dismal and unyielding eyes.
Tis in that silence and that dark
As in the chambers of the heart
Where past and future greet then part
So swift, they twain do seem so far.
For thus is shadow silence’ form
A rede of youthful innocence
Like beauty with the break of morn
Which comes and goes we know not whence
But passing as the shadow-light
As though a phantom o’er the sea
Whose breath is but the melody
Of shadow on the hilly height
I’ve stood upon that lurid shore
Beneath the wretchedness of moon
Where land and sea do oft make war
As though the world hath met its doom.
The shadow of a brief repose
The pause betwixt the crashing shoals
A moment stirs then wakes again
The chambers where my shadow’s been
If love and doom are but a pain
Ideas but over-gloried in a name
For fate hath strangely made them twain
My fate or doom is but the same.
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