WHAT mournful influence chills my soul to-night?
I watch the expiring flames that fade and fall,
From which outleap vague shafts of arrowy light,
Pursued by spectral shadows on the wall.
My thoughts are wandering on the verge of dreams,
Mist-laden, gray, and sombre as a pall,
While lower, feebler, flit the fireside gleams,
And darker those quaint shadows on the wall.
The old sad voice (fraught with the centuries' tears)
That seems through infinite space and time to call,
Faint with the doubts and grief of antique years,
Years that are dim as shadows on the wall;
The old sad voice is whispering to my heart:
Man's life, phantasmal, vain, illusive all,
Beholds too soon its cloud-foundations part,
Melting like midnight shadows on the wall.
Too soon the noblest passions, worn and old,
Die, or grow dulled and languid past recall;
Even love may wane in memory's twilight cold,
Sad, wavering, wan, as shadows on the wall.
And oft the loftiest nature's loftiest aim,
Heaven-soaring once, wide as this earthly ball,
Sinks, a tamed eagle o'er whose eyes of flame
The death-films steal like shadows on the wall.
A subtler voice whispers the conscious soul,
"What of high hopes which held thy youth in thrall?
Where flash thy chariot wheels, where shines thy goal?"
The mocking shadows answer from the wall.
With deepening dusk and faded flame they grow
Fantastic phantoms, hovering over all
The tremulous space, or flickering to and fro
In wild unearthly antics on the wall.
Till as the last slow ember drops in gloom,
Like vassals hurrying through some wizard's hall,
Whirling they pass, and darkness haunts the room,
No life, not even a shadow on the wall!
