Shuddering I stopped, for, with my feet so caked
With clay, damp-dragging, safer were the graves,
Crowding that vista of the wood,--which raked
My face with burrs,--than, walking towards the waves,
To feel earth slip away; the architraves
Of darkness plunge me downward to some pit
Of wallow and of water.--Madder knaves
Than I have stood thus in a fever-fit
Of heart and brain and shuddered from the brink of it.
V
Wooingly silence whispered to me there
Through boughs of dripping darkness sad with rain;
Darkness, that met my eyeballs everywhere,
Blind-packed and vacant as a madman's brain.
And so I stood and heard the dead leaves drain,
And through the leaves the haunted wind that hissed;
Then suddenly--perhaps it was the strain
Snapped in my temples--laughter seemed to twist,
With evil, night's dead mouth that bent to mine and kissed.