DESPONDENCY.
Reading edition
Slow figures in some live remorseless frieze, The approaching days escapeless and unguessed, With mask and shroud impenetrably dressed; Time, whose inexorable destinies Bear down upon us like impending seas; And the huge presence of this world, at best A sightless giant wandering without rest, Agèd and mad with many miseries. The weight and measure of these things who knows? Resting at times beside life's thought-swept stream, Sobered and stunned with unexpected blows, We scarcely hear the uproar; life doth seem, Save for the certain nearness of its woes, Vain and phantasmal as a sick man's dream.