Classic Poem

O over-crowded fields of starry death
What message lingers in the sea's faint breath
Of you to me to-night?
Just like a blind man passing through a camp
I guess an army round me by the tramp,
Yet no forms loom in sight.

The pulsing of the innumerable feet
Of all the dead seems now mine ear to meet:
This sombre sea and air
Seem full of viewless hints and whispers strange,
And cloud-girt hosts the watch-word interchange;
Great shadowy plumes they bear.

Ah! we shall join you. Ready or the reverse,
With lips that bless or foaming mouths that curse,
We shall be summoned,—each.
Some from laborious days and some from rest:
But all the unfailing and fatigueless quest
Of equal Death shall reach.

The woman waiting in the summer night
With hair unfastened and a glimpse of white
Bosom that pants for breath
Sees a strange face against her window shining,
Where those green helpful ivy-stalks are twining:—
“No, not thy lover. Death!”

What fingers steal around this girl's slim waist
In the ball-room, and cannot be displaced,—
Strong fingers, stiff and cold?
Death's, the eternal partner's.—And he twists
Around his fingers and remorseless wrists
Reluctant locks of gold.