WonderfulThings

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

Majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbræ.

"Cities crumble, and chariots rust
I see through a fog that is strange and gray
All kingly things fade back to the dust
Even the gates of Nineveh"

The world lay brown and barren at the closing of the year,
Where the rushes shook and shuddered on the borders of the mere,
And the troubled tide ran shoreward, where the estuaries twined
Through the wide and empty marsh toward the sullen hills behind:
And the smoke-engirdled city sulked beneath the leaden skies,
With the rain-tears slowly sliding from her million window eyes,
And the fog-ghost limped and lingered past the buildings clad in grime,
Till the Frost King gave the signal for the Christmas pantomime!

Here, where the world is quiet,
    Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
    In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest-time and mowing,
    A sleepy world of streams.

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears.

The street-lamps burn amidst the baleful glooms,
Amidst the soundless solitudes immense
Of ranged mansions dark and still as tombs.

Open the Door,

And listen!

Only the wind's muffled roar,

And the glisten

Of tears 'round the moon.

And, in fancy, the tread

Of vanishing shoon--

Out in the night with the Dead.