Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.
By Henry BeckHirst291 The Funeral of Time
L
March with measured step and tread
A long array of Phantoms wan
And pallid as the dead,—
The white and waxen dead!
With a crown on every head,
And a torch in every hand
To fright the sheeted ghosts away
That guard its portals night and day,
They seek the Shadow-Land.
The clouds around divide,
Raising themselves in giant shapes,
And gazing down in pride
On the spectres as they glide
Through the valley long and wide,—
On the spectres all so pale
In vestments whiter than the snow,
As through the dim defile they go
With melancholy wail.
The weeping ones have passed,
A throng succeeding, loftier
And statelier than the last,—
The Monarchs of the Past!
And upon the solemn blast,
Wave their plumes and pennons high,
And loud their mournful marches sweep
Up from the valley dark and deep
To the over-arching sky.
Stride on in stern array:
Before each band the Centuries,
With beards of silver gray,
The Marshals of the Day,
In silence pass away;
And behind them come the Hours
And Minutes, who, as on they go,
Are swinging steadily to and fro
The incense round in showers.
On sinewy shoulders borne,
Of many a dim, forgotten Year
From Primal Times forlorn.
All weary and all worn,
With their ancient garments torn
And their beards as white as Lear’s,
Lo! how they tremble as they tread,
Mourning above the marble dead,
In agonies of tears!
As wasted and as pale
As some dim ghost of shadowy days
In legendary tale.
God give the sleeper hail!
And the world hath much to wail
That his ears no more may hear;
For, with his palms across his breast,
He lieth in eternal rest
Along his stately bier.
How waxen-like his hands,
Which nevermore may turn the glass
That on his bosom stands,—
The glass whose solemn sands
Were won from Stygian strands!
For his weary work is done,
And he has reaped his latest field,
And none that scythe of his can wield
’Neath the dim, descending sun.
And with an eldritch cry
The guardian ghost sweeps wailingly
Athwart the troubled sky,
Like meteors flashing by,
As asunder crashing fly,
With a wild and clangorous din,
The gates before the funeral train,
Filing along the dreary plain
And marching slowly in.
Tall ebony columns rise
Up from the withering earth, and bear
Aloft the shrivelling skies,
Where the tempest trembling sighs,
And the ghostly moonlight dies
’Neath a lurid comet’s glare,
That over the mourners’ plumëd heads
And on the Dead a lustre sheds
From its crimson floating hair!
And as the echoes die,
The Shadow Chaos rises
With a wild unearthly cry,—
A giant, to the sky!
His arms outstretched on high
Over Time that dead doth lie;
And with a voice that shakes the spheres,
He shouts to the mourners mad with fears,
“Depart! Lo! here am I!”
Shivering the pillars fall;
And lightning-like the red flames rush,
A whirlwind, over all!
And Silence spreads her pall,
Like pinions over the hall,
Over the temple overthrown,
Over the dying and the unburied dead;
And, with a heavily-drooping head,
Sits, statue-like, alone!