How terrible these nights are when alone <br />With our scarred hearts, we sit in solitude, <br />And some old sorrow, to the world unknown, <br />Does suddenly with silent steps intrude. <br /> <br />After the guests departed, and the light <br />Burned dimly in my room, there came to me, <br />As noiselessly as shadows of the night, <br />The spectre of a woe that used to be. <br /> <br />Out of the gruesome darkness and the gloom <br />I saw it peering; and, in still despair, <br />I watched it gliding swift across the room, <br />Until it came and stood beside my chair. <br /> <br />Why, need I tell thee what its shape or name? <br />Thou hast thy secret hidden from the light: <br />And be it sin or sorrow, woe or shame, <br />Thou dost not like to meet it in the night. <br /> <br />And yet it comes. As certainly as death, <br />And far more cruel since death ends all pain, <br />On lonesome nights we feel its icy breath, <br />And turn and face the thing we fancied slain. <br /> <br />With shrinking hearts, we view the ghastly shape; <br />We look into its eyes with fear and dread, <br />And know that we can never more escape <br />Until the grave doth fold us with the dead. <br /> <br />On the swift maelstrom of the eddying world <br />We hurl our woes, and think they are no more. <br />But round and round by dizzy billows whirled, <br />They reach out sinewy arms and swim to shore.<br /><br />Ella Wheeler Wilcox<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/spectres-2/
