Composed Just After Midnight On The 31st Of December, 1878

A MOMENT since his breath dissolved in air!
And now divorced from life's last hectic glow,
He joins the old ghostly years of long ago,
In some cloud-folded realm of vague despair;
Ah me! the unsceptred years that wander there!
With cold, wan hands, and faces white as snow,
And echoes of dead voices quavering low
The phantom-burden of long-perished care!
Perchance all unsubstantialized and gray,
Time's earliest year now greets his last, deceased;
Or he that dumbly gazed on Adam's fall,
Palely emerging from the shadowy east,
With flickering semblance of cold crown and pall,
Clothes the dim ghost of him just passed away!