ANNIHILATION
by: Elizabeth Oakes-Smith
(1806-1893)
- OUBT, cypress
crowned, upon a ruined arch
- Amid the shapely temple overthrown,
- Exultant, stays at length her onward march:
- Her victim, all with earthliness o'ergrown,
- Hath sunk himself to earth to perish there;
- His thoughts are outward, all his love a blight,
- Dying, deluding, are his hopes, though fair--
- And death, the spirit's everlasting night.
- Thus, midnight travellers, on some mountain steep
- Hear far above the avalanche boom down,
- Starting the glacier echoes from their sleep,
- And lost in glens to human foot unknown--
- The death-plunge of the lost come to their ear,
- And silence claims again her region cold and drear.
MORE POEMS BY ELIZABETH OAKES-SMITH |
|
|
|
|