Part 2 — LETHE.

There is a lake whose lilies lie Like maidens in the lap of death, So pale, so cold, so motionless Its Stygian breast they press; They breathe, and toward the purple sky The pallid perfumes of their breath Ascend in spiral shapes, for there No wind disturbs the voiceless air— No murmur breaks the oblivious mood Of that tenebrean solitude— No Djinn, no Ghoul, no Afrit laves His giant limbs within its waves Beneath the wan Saturnian light That swoons in the omnipresent night; But only funeral forms arise, With arms uplifted to the skies, And gaze, with blank, cavernous eyes In whose dull glare no Future lies,— The shadows of the dead—the Dead Of whom no mortal soul hath read, No record come, in prose or rhyme, Down from the dim Primeval Time! A moment gazing—they are gone— Without a sob—without a groan— Without a sigh—without a moan— And the lake again is left alone— Left to that undisturbed repose Which in an ebon vapor flows Among the cypresses that stand A stone-cast from the sombre strand— Among the trees whose shadows wake, But not to life, within the lake, That stand, like statues of the Past, And will, while that ebony lake shall last. But when the more than Stygian night Descends with slow and owl-like flight, Silent as Death (who comes—we know— Unheard, unknown of all below;) Above that dark and desolate wave, The reflex of the eternal grave— Gigantic birds with flaming eyes Sweep upward, onward through the skies, Or stalk, without a wish to fly, Where the reposing lilies lie; While, stirring neither twig nor grass, Among the trees, in silence, pass Titanic animals whose race Existed, but has left no trace Of name, or size, or shape, or hue— Whom ancient Adam never knew. At midnight, still without a sound, Approaching through the black Profound, Shadows, in shrouds of pallid hue, Come slowly, slowly, two by two, In double line, with funeral march, Through groves of cypress, yew and larch, Descending in those waves that part, Then close, above each silent heart; While, in the distance, far ahead, The shadows of the Earlier Dead Arise, with speculating eyes, Forgetful of their destinies, And gaze, and gaze, and gaze again Upon the long funereal train, Undreaming their Descendants come To make that ebony lake their home— To vanish, and become at last A parcel of the awful Past— The hideous, unremembered Past Which Time, in utter scorn, has cast Behind him, as with unblenched eye, He travels toward Eternity— That Lethe, in whose sunless wave Even he, himself, must find a grave!