To Mother

A thought rests upon your brow
And in silence,
Through your dark silken eyelids rolling
Melts in strange mad glow of your flaming eyes
Which, partly uplifted to the regardless heavens, slowly move, almost grandly round in their orbits.

Mother!
You have started from sleep, all new sleep, again?
Or is it not sleep, and just the sable dark night hovering above,
That has left marred the calm of your countenance

And yet – To the heaven’s pleasure,
That it may sweep this scourge from your face,
Must you assume the face of an aged dame
Of hope, what height of madness is this?
Since all alone, heaven has willed, you die.

O Mother!
Your age is outworn
And effete to conceive the truth:
“Forlorn you stand –
For one and all, the gods are now departed.”