Classic Poem

“So fern, und doch so nah.”
—Goethe

Thick darkness broodeth o'er the world:
The raven pinions of the Night,
Close on her silent bosom furled,
Reflect no gleam of Orient light.
E'ndash the wild Norland fires that mocked
The faint bloom of the eastern sky,
Now leave me, in close darkness locked,
To-night's weird realm of fantasy.

Borne from pale shadow-lands remote,
A morphean music, wildly sweet,
Seems, on the starless gloom, to float,
Like the white-pinioned Paraclete.
Softly into my dream it flows,
Then faints into the silence drear;
While from the hollow dark outgrows
The phantom Past, pale gliding near.