A Shadow Is a Fickle Thing

A shadow is a fickle thing Reflections of a darker light Whose shape is like remembering Lost legends of the night. Yonder wakes some ghost some dream So oft as starry battered skies Have shed a thousand shattered beams On dismal and unyielding eyes. Tis in that silence and that dark As in the chambers of the heart Where past and future greet then part So swift, they twain do seem so far. For thus is shadow silence’ form A rede of youthful innocence Like beauty with the break of morn Which comes and goes we know not whence But passing as the shadow-light As though a phantom o’er the sea Whose breath is but the melody Of shadow on the hilly height I’ve stood upon that lurid shore Beneath the wretchedness of moon Where land and sea do oft make war As though the world hath met its doom. The shadow of a brief repose The pause betwixt the crashing shoals A moment stirs then wakes again The chambers where my shadow’s been If love and doom are but a pain Ideas but over-gloried in a name For fate hath strangely made them twain My fate or doom is but the same.