(_La Fin de la journée_)
Beneath a wan and sickly light
Life, impudent and noisy, sways;
Most meaningless in all her ways.
She dances like a bedlamite,
Until the far horizon grows
Big with sweet night, at last! whose name
Appeases hunger, soothes the shame
And sorrow that the poet knows.
My very bones seem on the rack;
My spirit wails aloud; meseems
My heart is thronged with funeral dreams.
I will lie down and round me wrap
The cool, black curtains of the gloom
That night hath woven in her loom.