Beyond Utterance

There in the midst of gloom the church-spire rose, And not a star lit any side of heaven; In glades not far the damp reeds coldly touched Their sides, like soldiers dead before they fall; There in the belfry clung the sleeping bat,-- Most abject creature, hanging like a leaf Down from the bell-tongue, silent as the speech The dead have lost ere they are laid in graves. A melancholy prelude I would sing To song more drear, while thought soars into gloom. Find me the harbor of the roaming storm, Or end of souls whose doom is life itself! So vague, yet surely sad, the song I dream And utter not. So sends the tide its roll,-- Unending chord of horror for a woe We but half know, even when we die of it.