THE MEDUSA OF THE SKIES

Haggard as if resurgent from a tomb, The moon uprears her ghastly, shrunken head, Crowned with such light as flares upon the dead From pallid skies more death-like than the gloom. Now fall her beams till slope and plain assume The whiteness of a land whence life is fled; And shadows that a sepulcher might shed Move livid as the stealthy hands of doom. O'er rigid hills and valleys locked and mute, A pallor steals as of a world made still When Death, that erst had crept, stands absolute— An earth now frozen fast by power of eyes That malefice and purposed silence fill, The gaze of that Medusa of the skies.